LIBRARY 

OF  THE 

University  of  California. 

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RELIGION  FOR  TO-DAY 


BY 


MINOT  J.  SAVAGE,  D.D. 


The  first  heaven  a?id  the  first  earth  are  passed  away;  and^ 
behold,  I  inake  all  things  new  " 


BOSTON 

Geo.  H.  Ellis,  272  Congress  Street 

1900 


3  -a^S^ 


COPYRIGHT 

X897 

(;fo.  h.  elms 


eEO.  H. ELLIS,  PRIHTtU,  J72  CONG»f8?  ST.,  BOSTON, 


DEDICATION 


It*    GRATITUDE    FOR    THE    LOVE    WHICH    HAS    DONE    EVERYTHING    TO 

KEEP    ME    FROM     BEING    HOMESICK    IN    A    NEW   CITY,   AND 

FOR   THE  WELCOME  AND   SYMPATHETIC  LISTENING 

GIVEN   TO    MY   WORDS,   I    DEDICATE  THIS 

BOOK,    THE     FIRST-FRUITS     OK 

MY  NF.W  YORK  WORK, 


Cburcb  ot  tbe  IS^ceemb 


PREFACE. 


The  chapters  in  this  volume  are  only  some  of  the  sermons 
preached  in  the  Church  of  the  Messiah  during  the  early  months- 
of  this  year, — 1897.  As  no  word  of  any  one  of  them  was  ever 
written,  they  have  the  faults  and,  it  is  hoped,  some  of  the  virtues 
of  free  speaking. 

Those  who  are  familiar  with  my  work  during  the  past  twenty- 
two  years  in  Boston  will  note  many  repetitions  of  thought.  In- 
deed, I  have  not  cared  to  avoid  it.  I  have  tried  to  meet  the 
wants  of  this  new  field  as  though  I  had  never  occupied  any  other.. 
A  man  should  not  allow  his  own  shadow  to  intimidate  him.  So> 
the  book  will  help  those  whom  it  will  help,  and  others  —  will  not 
read  it. 

New  York,  May,  1897. 


CONTENTS. 


PAGE 

Present  Religious  Conditioxs i 

Causes  of  Present  Religious  Unrest i8 

Is  Religion  Dying? 33 

What  is  Christianity? 50 

God  as  Inside  the  Universe,  not  Outside 66 

Religion  Natural,  not  Statutory 83 

Standing  Ground  for  Trust loi 

Man  not  Fallen,  but  Rising 119 

Revelation  Natural  and  Progkkssivi; 136 

Is  God  Incarnate  in  One  Man  only  or  in  Humanity?    .  154 

The  Divine  Fatherhood  and  our  Human  Childhood.     .  175 
Immortality   from  the   Point  of  View  of   the   Modern 

World 191 

Hell  and  Heaven 211 

The  Church  of  Yesterday,  To-day,  and  To-morrow     ,     .  232 


PRESENT  RELIGIOUS   CONDITIONS. 


It  is  not  an  uncommon  thing  to  find  people  discussing 
the  question  as  to  which  is  the  more  important  element  of 
religion,  the  head  or  the  heart,  the  emotional  side  or  the 
thought  side,  the  power  or  the  intelligence.  It  has  always 
seemed  to  me  a  very  strange  question.  As  though  there 
could  be  any  possibility  of  doubt  on  the  subject!  And 
yet  you  find  whole  denominations  distinguished  for  the 
manifestation  of  emotion  in  religion,  and  feeling  that  this 
is  the  one  thing  of  chiefest  importance  of  all. 

On  the  other  hand,  you  will  find  certain  denominations 
—  and  we  Unitarians  are  accused  of  it  very  commonly  — 
where  there  is  supposed  to  be  an  undue  development  of  the 
intellectual  side,  which  are  spoken  of  as  critical  and  cold. 
It  is  possible  that  the  one  side  should  be  over-developed 
at  the  expense  of  the  other ;  and  yet  it  seems  to  me  that 
there  is  no  sort  of  question  that  the  two  are  of  equal  impor- 
tance, and  neither  one  of  them  can  be  slighted  without  seri- 
ous detriment  to  the  total  result. 

Suppose  you  should  find  the  people  on  board  a  great 
steamer  in  mid-ocean  discussing  the  question  as  to  which 
was  the  more  important,  the  engine  down  in  the  hold  or  the 
man  at  the  wheel  with  the  compass  and  chart.  Would  you 
consider  it  a  sensible  discussion  for  anybody  to  engage  in  ? 
Without  the  engine  in  the  hold  there  is  no  movement ;  with- 
out the  man  at  the  wheel,  with  his  compass  and  his  chart, 


2  Religion  for  To-day 

there  may  be  movement,  but  there  is  no  intelligent,  there  is 
no  safe  movement. 

Power  alone,  whether  it  be  the  wind  or  whether  it  be  the 
power  of  religious  emotion,  may  drive  people,  but  whither  ? 
The  wind  or  the  engine  may  drive  a  ship  towards  port, —  if 
it  does  it  is  purely  an  accident, —  but  unless  there  is  a  man 
at  the  wheel,  it  may  just  as  readily  drive  the  ship  wildly 
in  this  direction  or  that,  against  an  iceberg  or  upon  the 
rocks.  While,  if  you  do  not  have  the  engine  in  the  hold 
that  is  capable  of  generating  steam  that  can  be  turned  into 
motion  of  the  ship, —  if  you  do  not  have  that,  the  man  at 
the  wheel  is  powerless.  He  may  look  over  the  wide  waste 
of  waters  about  him,  and  know  in  which  direction  he  ought 
to  move,  but  he  has  no  power ;  so  he  stands  intelligent  but 
helpless. 

Which,  then,  is  the  more  important,  the  emotional  or  the 
intellectual  side  of  religion  ?  Each  is  equally  important 
with  the  other ;  and  both  are  needed,  if  religion,  like  a  ship 
at  sea,  is  ever  to  pursue  an  intelligent  course  and  arrive  at 
any  desirable  haven. 

A  hundred  and  fifty  years  ago  the  people  of  this  country 
were  substantially  at  peace  in  their  religious  ideas.  The 
surface  of  the  popular  belief  was  unruffled ;  there  was 
substantial  agreement  in  regard  to  the  religious  and  theo- 
logical ideas  which  were  held.  And  there  are  some  people 
to-day  who  are  at  peace,  enjoying  a  very  desirable  quiet. 

Fortunate  are  you,  friends,  if  any  of  you  are  here  to-day 
who  have  inherited  a  belief  that  gives  you  satisfaction  and 
comfort,  w^hich  satisfies  your  intellectual  demands  upon 
it, —  if  you  make  any, —  which  gives  you  peace.  Fortunate 
are  you  to  have  been  sheltered  from  the  influx  of  new 
thoughts  and  restless  questionings  which  have  invaded  the 


Present  Religious  Conditions  3 

larger  part  of  the  modem  world.  Fortunate,  I  say,  are  you 
if  you  are  still  possessed  of  this  kind  of  peace.  But,  as  you 
look  out  over  the  world,  you  must  recognize  the  fact  that  the 
great  majority  of  the  people  of  this  modern  time  of  ours  are 
not  in  possession  of  this  peace ;  and  perhaps,  if  you  think 
about  it  a  little  carefully,  you  will  question  whether  this  kind 
of  peace,  which  is  simply  quiescence,  is,  after  all,  the  most 
desirable  possession. 

There  is  the  peace  of  a  pool  that  reflects  the  sun  by  day 
and  the  stars  by  night,  the  grasses  and  the  trees  upon  its 
borders,  and  which  has  a  certain  amount  of  life  in  it  for  its 
surroundings ;  but  it  goes  nowhere.  There  is  another  kind 
of  peace, —  the  peace  of  the  brook  or  of  the  mighty  river, 
the  peace  of  orderly  movement,  that  carries  boats,  ships, 
the  world's  commerce,  upon  its  bosom,  and  sails  out  towards 
the  mighty  ocean  of  God,  that  flows  round  and  grasps  the 
world. 

There  is  the  peace  of  a  bird  poised  in  the  air  with 
motionless  pinion.  There  is  the  peace  of  the  kingly  eagle 
sweeping  on  his  way  in  spite  of  storms  and  mighty  winds, 
rejoicing  in  them  in  his  power. 

There  is  the  peace  of  a  ship  at  sea  which,  as  Coleridge 
says  in  his  ''  Ancient  Mariner,"  floats 

"  As  idle  as  a  painted  ship 
Upon  a  painted  ocean." 

There  is  that  more  magnificent  peace  of  one  of  our  great 
liners,  freighted,  full  of  passengers,  of  life,  of  meaning,  that 
laughs  at  the  puny  waves  along  its  sides,  and  that  treads  its 
pathway  across  the  ocean,  laughing  in  the  face  of  all  the 
winds  that  buffet  it.  It  seems  to  me  that  this  life-peace, 
peace  with    motion,  peace  that   goes  somewhere,  that  has 


4  Religion  for  To-day 

some  magnificent  object,  end,  in  view,  is  a  grander  peace 
than  that  of  mere  quiescence,  that  accepts  things  as  they 
are  and  demands  nothing  more  than  that. 

Fortunate,  I  say,  are  those  of  you  who  are  at  peace ;  for 
some  of  us  who  are  not  do  at  times  become  so  weary  of 
thinking !  Now  and  then,  some  man,  through  shear  weari- 
ness, just  because  he  is  tired  out,  drifts  to  some  church 
where  thinking  is  a  sin,  and  finds  the  greatest  intellectual 
rest.  Fortunate,  I  say,  in  one  way,  are  you  who  are  at 
peace. 

But  you  must  remember,  friends,  that  there  are  thousands 
on  thousands  of  men  and  women  in  the  modern  world  who 
neither  do  nor  can  share  this  quiescent  peace  with  you,  for 
better  or  worse,  and  we  must  simply  face  the  facts  which  we 
cannot  help.  These  people  are  adrift;  they  do  not  share 
the  old  ideas.  They  have  outgrown  them,  shall  I  say  ?  If 
that  is  intimating  too  much,  at  this  stage  of  my  discussion, 
let  us  simply  say  that  they  have  drifted  away  from  them,  or 
gone  back  from  them.  At  any  rate  they  do  not  possess  the 
old-time  belief  which  gave  their  fathers  peace  and  quiet  in 
their  religious  ideas.  They  are  filled  with  doubt  and  ques- 
tion,—  not  in  regard  to  trifling  matters,  but  concerning  the 
deep-down  problems  of  life. 

I  have  had  questions  asked  me  since  I  have  been  with 
you  these  few  weeks  to  answer  which  would  keep  me  busy 
for  two  years, —  questions  that  take  hold  of  the  very  foun- 
dations of  things,  questions  that  people  need  to  have 
answered  in  order  hopefully  and  manfully  and  womanly  to 
live. 

These  questions  then,  I  say,  are  in  all  the  air,  and  they 
have  disturbed  and  troubled  thousands  on  thousands  of 
people  in  this  modern  world.     And  who  are  these  people  ? 


Present  Religious  Conditions  5 

They  are  not  the  bad  people,  they  are  not  the  people  that 
anybody  would  call  wicked  people,  they  are  not  the  ignorant 
people.  You  will  find  the  great  majority  of  the  ignorant 
people  not  much  disturbed  by  these  questions.  It  is  the 
people  who  read  and  think  who  doubt  and  ask  questions ; 
and  among  these  people  are  some  of  the  mightiest  and 
noblest  of  men,  the  leaders  of  the  world.  You  would  not 
call  Herbert  Spencer  a  bad  man  nor  an  ignorant  man.  No 
one  would  think  of  accusing  Mr.  Tyndall  or  Mr.  Huxley  of 
undervaluing  moral  laws  or  disregarding  truth.  They  are 
not  the  people  who  are  careless  about  these  things. 

There  never  was  such  an  earnest  truth-seeking,  such  a 
feverish  desire  for  truth  in  the  history  of  this  world  as  char- 
acterizes the  leaders  of  the  world's  thought  and  life  in  this 
nineteenth  century  of  ours.  It  is  the  best  people,  it  is  the 
most  intelligent  people,  who  above  all  things  desire  truth, 
who  are  asking  these  questions. 

This  is  simply  a  statement  of  fact  which  we  must  recog- 
nize for  better  or  worse,  whatever  its  meaning  may  be. 
And  let  us  face  another  point  right  here. 

Those  people  who  never  have  any  doubts,  and  those 
people  who  have  doubts  and  feel  guilty  on  account  of  them, 
might  as  well  recognize  the  fact  that  doubt  is  sometimes 
just  as  much  of  a  religious  duty  as  is  belief.  It  is  just  as 
much  a  man's  business  to  doubt  that  which  cannot  produce 
its  credentials  as  it  is  to  accept  that  which  can.  How  else 
shall  we  sift  the  false  from  the  true  ?  Doubt  is  just  as  true 
a  virtue  as  is  faith ;  and  all  of  us  doubt.  The  person  who 
thinks  he  or  she  has  never  had  a  doubt  in  the  world,  if  you 
ask  a  few  questions,  will  reveal  the  fact  that  all  that  which 
is  not  accepted  is  doubted  or  denied,  whatever  it  may  be. 

The  fact  that  we  believe  one  thing  means  that  we  do  not 


6  Religion  for  To-day 

believe  that  which  is  excluded  by  this.  And  let  us  remem- 
ber that  doubt  may  have  reverence  and  regard  for  God  and 
the  tenderest  religious  qualities  about  it.  As  Tennyson, 
one  of  the  most  profoundly  religious  natures  of  this  genera- 
tion, has  sung, — 

"  There  lives  more  faith  in  honest  doubt, 
Believe  me,  than  in  half  the  creeds." 

The  man  who  is  doubting  merely  as  a  preliminary  to  find- 
ing out  what  is  true  is  facing  Godward  and  only  anxious  for 
light. 

In  order  to  answer  the  great  questions  on  which  a  happy 
and  successful  life  depend,  we  must  use  these  intellects  of 
ours  which  God  has  given  us.  It  seems  to  me  one  of  the 
greatest  misfortunes  of  the  world  to  have  intelligence  and 
then  to  find  out  that  it  is  wicked  to  use  it.  Why  are  we  so 
weighted  and  hampered  with  this  incessant  demand  to  ques- 
tion and  think  and  discover  and  know,  if  we  are  told  that 
it  is  only  a  temptation  of  the  devil  after  all,  and  we  must 
shut  our  eyes  and  blindly  accept  something, —  what  t 

Note  here,  friends,  that,  if  you  ever  give  any  reason  for 
the  position  you  hold,  then  you  assume,  in  spite  of  your- 
selves, the  absolute  supremacy  of  reason  in  the  last  resort. 
Why  are  you  a  Christian  ?  Why  are  not  you  a  Moham- 
medan ?  Why  not  a  Buddhist  .<*  Why  are  you  a  member 
of  this  denomination  or  that?  The  moment  you  attempt 
to  give  an  intelligent  answer  to  that,  you  give  a  reason,  as 
Paul  says  you  ought,  for  the  faith  that  is  in  you.  And  the 
moment  you  give  a  reason,  you  appeal  to  reason  as  the  court 
of  last  resort.  In  other  words,  though  you  may  think  ration- 
alism is  a  dreadful  thing,  you  are  rationalistic  in  spite  of 
yourselves. 


Present  Religious  Conditions  J 

Why  do  you  accept  this  Bible,  and  not  the  Koran  ?  The 
moment  you  give  a  reason,  you  mean  that  reason  is  compe- 
tent to  pronounce  on  problems  connected  with  this  Bible. 
If  you  deny  the  function  of  reason,  then  think, —  there  is  no 
reason  left  why  you  should  be  even  a  Christian,  no  reason 
left  why  you  should  believe  one  thing  more  than  another, 
and  you  are  all  afloat  in  a  vast  and  unsettled  sea  of  doubt ! 

We  must  use  the  reason  which  God  has  given  us  to  light 
us  on  our  way.  Even  Jesus  appealed  to  this  rationalism 
as  the  supreme  thing  in  regard  to  matters  of  duty,  and  said, 
"  Why  even  of  your  own  selves  judge  ye  not  what  is  right  ? " 

We  take,  then,  the  authority  of  Jesus  for  placing  reason 
as  the  supreme  court  in  which  these  great  problems  are 
finally  to  be  settled. 

A  sea  captain  in  mid-ocean  takes  the  sun,  as  we  say,  at 
noon,  and  then  he  examines  his  chart,  and  knowing  the 
port  from  which  he  sailed,  he  finds  out  where  he  is ;  and 
having  found  out  where  he  is,  he  has  no  practical  question 
as  to  the  next  step,  as  to  which  way  he  is  to  sail  in  order  to 
reach  the  harbor  for  which  he  originally  set  out. 

It  seems  to  me  that  in  order  to  comprehend  some  of 
these  problems  with  which  we  are  to  deal  in  some  of  these 
following  Sundays,  we  need,  in  the  first  place,  if  possible, 
to  find  out  where  we  are.  We  need  to  comprehend  in  gen- 
eral outline  the  present  religious  conditions  of  the  world. 
How  shall  we  do  it  t  I  have  given  it  a  great  deal  of  thought 
during  the  past  week.  I  do  not  wish  to  dwell  on  it  at  so 
great  length  as  to  give  it  disproportionate  place  or  time; 
and  it  has  seemed  to  me  that  perhaps,  by  presenting  the 
matter  through  an  illustration  like  that  upon  which  I  am 
about  to  enter,  I  could  do  it  as  satisfactorily  as  in  any 
other  way. 


8  Religion  for  To-day 

Suppose  a  full  grown  and  intelligent  man  were  placed 
suddenly  upon  this  planet  for  the  first  time.  He  wishes  to 
find  out  what  is  true  in  regard  to  matters  of  religion.  What 
will  he  do  ?  He  will  naturally  start  out  on  a  tour  of  investi- 
gation ;  he  will  wish  to  ask  those  who  claim  to  have  author- 
ity in  such  matters  and  find  out  where  they  stand.  Now  let 
us  follow  this  supposed  man  on  this  tour  of  investigation  for 
a  little,  and  in  that  way  find  out  what  are  the  present  relig- 
ious conditions  of  the  world. 

And  note,  friends,  one  thing :  I  beg  you,  if  I  use  any  de- 
nominational name,  or  if  I  refer  to  any  man  prominent  in 
the  religious  life  of  the  modern  world,  never  for  a  moment 
think  I  am  going  to  attack  any  denomination  or  any  man,  or 
that  I  am  going  to  criticise  them  in  any  unkind  way.  My 
purpose  is  simply  to  know  facts,  to  see  where  we  are.  That 
is,  instead  of  criticising,  I  wish  to  define  things. 

Now  this  man  who  wishes  to  find  out  the  present  religious 
condition  of  the  world,  if  he  begins  by  asking  some  of  the 
great  general  questions,  will  find  himself  face  to  face  with  a 
strange  fact  like  this:  he  will  discover  that  Christendom, 
the  great  majority  of  Christian  people,  claim  that  God  has 
given  a  miraculous,  supernatural,  infallible  revelation  of  his 
will  to  the  world.  But  fronting  that  claim  he  will  find  an- 
other fact :  that  it  was  not  given  until  the  world  had  been 
wandering  on  its  dark  and  hopeless  way  for  a  hundred  or 
two  hundred  thousand  years,  and  that,  on  this  theory,  all 
these  people,  countless  billions  on  billions  of  souls,  had 
gone  to  eternal  loss  without  having  had  the  slightest  oppor- 
tunity to  know  that  there  was  any  God  or  that  he  had  any 
will  to  reveal  to  them. 

And  then  he  will  be  confronted  with  another  fact  quite  as 
Strange  and  startling, —  that,  since  this  supposed  revelation 


Present  Religious  Conditions  g 

was  given  to  the  world,  less  than  a  third  of  all  the  people 
that  live  on  the  planet  have  heard  of  it.  Not  a  third  of  the 
inhabitants  of  the  world  to-day  know  that  there  is  any  such 
thing  in  existence  as  our  Bible,  or  any  Christian  claim  of 
revelation  ;  and  yet  we  are  asked  to  believe  that  all  these 
people  are  plunging  ceaselessly  into  the  seething  abyss  of 
eternal  woe. 

If  he  asks  a  little  further  he  will  find  that  the  majority 
of  the  people  in  Christendom  do  not  accept  the  Church's- 
claim  in  regard  to  this  book.  That  is,  that  God,  omnipotent- 
and  all-wise,  and  wishing  to  reveal  himself,  yet  has  not 
made  the  matter  so  clear  that  all  honest  people  are  com- 
pelled to  accept  the  claim  as  made. 

Then  he  will  inquire  further,  as  he  looks  over  Christen- 
dom itself,  and  he  will  find  the  Greek  Church  claiming  to  be 
the  original  one,  looking  upon  the  Catholic  Church  and  all 
Protestant  Churches  as  parvenues  and  upstarts,  and  wilful 
perverters  of  the  truth.  He  will  find  the  Catholic  Church 
making  the  same  claim,  and  looking  upon  the  Greek  Church 
and  all  Protestant  Churches  as  perverters  of  God's  truth. 
He  will  find  the  Protestant  Church  divided  up  into  no  end 
of  denominations,  each  claiming  that  its  own  interpreta- 
tion of  the  infallible  truth  is  the  correct  one.  How  would 
the  man  inquiring  after  some  Scriptural  authority  for  relig- 
ious truth  be  baffled  and  bewildered !  If  he  still  went  to 
the  Catholic  Church,  and  investigated  its  claims  still  more, 
he  would  find  that  it  asserts  that  it,  and  it  alone,  is  the 
organized  infallible  body  of  God  on  earth,  and  that,  if  a 
person  is  sacramentally  connected  with  that  body,  he  par- 
takes of  its  life  as  the  limb  does  of  the  trunk  of  a  tree, 
and  so  has  his  final  safety  assured. 

But  he  will  find  that  this  same  Catholic  Church,  as  the 


lO  Religion  for  To-day 

ages  go  by,  is  losing  its  hold  on  the  intelligence  of  men; 
that  is,  the  more  intelligent  people  become  the  less  they 
are  ready  to  accept  its  claims  to  be  the  one  representative 
of  God  on  earth. 

Go  back  two  or  three  hundred  years  and  you  will  find  all 
Europe  in  the  grasp  of  the  Catholic  Church.  To-day  there 
is  only  one  country  that  it  holds  with  the  same  old-time 
power,  and  that  is  a  country  that  is  off  the  track  of  modern 
civilization  and  plays  no  part  in  the  policy  of  the  modem 
world, —  that  is  Spain. 

You  will  find  that  education,  you  will  find  that  politics, 
you  will  find  that  philosophy,  you  will  find  that  science,  you 
will  find  that  art, —  all  these  great  branches  of  human  life 
that  used  to  be  absorbed  by  and  utterly  subservient  to  the 
Church, —  have  now  thrown  off  its  claim  and  are  free.  You 
will  find  that  the  late  pope  has  therefore  solemnly  banned 
modern  civilization  as  godless. 

We  can  hardly  accept  the  claim  of  a  church  that,  assert- 
ing that  it  has  God  behind  it  and  in  it,  is  losing  its  grip 
on  the  modern  intelligent  world,  and,  as  the  world  grows 
more  intelligent,  is  waning  in  power.  We  cannot  believe, 
friends,  whatever  else  we  do,  that  God  is  losing  his  control 
over  this  little  planet,  and  that  it  is  going  all  wrong,  against 
his  will  and  in  spite  of  his  omnipotence. 

Suppose  this  same  investigator  turned  to  the  Protestant 
Churches,  what  would  he  find  ?  He  would  find  that  at  the 
time  of  the  Reformation  an  infallible  book  was  set  up.  He 
would  note  that  the  claim  of  absolute  infallibility  for  this 
book  was  never  made  in  the  history  of  the  Church  until  this 
sixteenth  century.  Do  you  know  that  the  canon  of  the 
Bible  was  never  authoritatively  declared  until  the  sixteenth 
century?  and  are  you  aware  of  the  fact  that  Luther  and 


Present  Religious  Conditions  ii 

Calvin  considered  themselves  perfectly  at  liberty  to  criticise 
the  Bible  as  they  would  any  other  book,  and  even  to  reject 
certain  of  its  books  as  unworthy  of  a  place  in  the  canon  ? 
This  claim  was  never  made  by  the  Bible  itself ;  it  was  never 
made  by  the  Church  until  the  necessity  arose  to  pit  one 
infallibility  against  another.  You  will  find  that  great  An- 
glican teachers  to-day — queen's  chaplains  and  leading 
scholars  of  the  English  Church  —  will  tell  you  the  Bible  is 
simply  the  record  of  the  teachings  of  the  early  Church  and 
of  no  more  authority  than  the  utterances  of  the  Church 
to-day. 

This,  I  say,  is  what  this  earnest  investigator  of  truth  would 
discover.  He  would  find  a  certain  world-scheme  including 
the  fall,  the  loss  of  the  race,  supernatural  redemption,  and 
endless  rewards  and  punishments ;  and  he  would  find  this 
general  scheme,  which  is  familiar  to  you  all  as  the  old  Prot- 
estant belief,  held  as  authoritatively  revealed  divine  truth. 

He  would  find,  however,  that  at  the  present  time  only  a 
very  few  of  the  Church,  those  who  claim  that  they  have 
not  changed,  any  longer  accept  this  belief.  That  is,  that 
which  Protestantism  declares  to  be  the  clear  teaching  of  the 
infallible  book  in  the  sixteenth  century  is  to-day  regarded 
in  its  entirety  as  the  clear  reading  of  that  book  by  almost 
none  of  the  Orthodox  Protestant  Churches  themselves.  You 
will  find  now  and  then  a  man  like  Dr.  Gardner  Spring — 
formerly  of  the  old  Brick  Church  in  this  city  —  who,  when 
asked  why  God  did  not  save  more  souls,  said,  quietly  and 
complacently,  he  supposed  that  God  saved  just  as  many 
souls  as  he  wanted  to. 

You  will  find  now  and  then  a  man  like  Mr.  Moody, —  I 
am  not  going  to  criticise  him  ;  Mr.  Moody  is  earnest,  Mr. 
Moody  is  in  dead  earnest,  he  is  consistent  with  his  belief, 


12  Religion  for  To-day 

as  the  great  majority  of  those  who  claim  to  share  that  be- 
lief with  him  are  not ;  I  have  only  words  of  praise  for  him, 
occupying  the  position  that  he  does;  he  is  doing  what 
thousands  of  other  men  in  this  country  ought  to  be  doing  if 
they  half  believe  what  they  say  they  do, —  but  Mr.  Moody 
says  that  we  must  accept  the  story  of  Jonah  and  the  whale 
or  else  we  must  give  up  God ;  he  said  this  within  a  week  or 
two.  Why.?  Because,  according  to  his  idea,  we  have  no 
reason  for  believing  either  in  God  or  Jonah  except  this 
book.  He  has  turned  the  matter  right  around  from  the 
way  I  put  it.  I  think  it  is  religion  that  creates  Bibles,  and 
not  Bibles  that  create  religion. 

Now  he  would  find  a  few  persons  holding  these  beliefs 
unchanged.  But  if  he  looked  into  the  great,  grave,  earnest 
Orthodox  Churches  he  would  find  that  there  modern  thought 
and  modern  question  are  creeping  in ;  he  would  find  Dr. 
Briggs  of  the  Union  Theological  Seminary  discussing  the 
higher  criticism,  which  means,  plainly  stated,  that  the  Bible 
in  all  its  parts  and  verses  is  not  infallible.  That  is  what  it 
comes  to,  whether  you  call  it  higher  criticism  or  any  other 
kind  of  criticism. 

He  would  find  that  heresy  is  a  matter  of  geographical 
distribution :  that  one  man  is  prosecuted  for  heresy  in  one 
part  of  the  country  and  another  goes  undisturbed  in  another 
part,  though  each  holds  the  same  beliefs. 

The  point  I  wish  to  bring  out  is  simply  that  there  is  no 
fixed  standard  on  the  part  of  any  branch  of  the  Church. 
He  would  find  not  only  these  men  to  whom  I  have  referred, 
but  other  men  like  Dr.  Lyman  Abbott,  like  Dr.  Heber  New- 
ton, like  Dr.  Washington  Gladden,  of  Columbus,  Ohio,  like 
the  leading  men  in  New  Haven,  like  nearly  all  the  profes- 
sors at  Andover, —  he  would  find  these  gladly  accepting  the 


Present  Religiotis  Conditions  13 

designation  of  "  Liberal  Orthodox."  And  what  does  that 
mean?  It  means,  when  you  interpret  it  and  put  it  in 
straight  clear  English,  that  they  have  given  up  the  old-time 
belief  in  almost  every  single  one  of  the  points  that  used  to 
be  regarded  as  absolutely  essential ;  that  is  what  it  means. 

Dr.  Gordon  of  the  Old  South  Church  in  Boston  no 
longer  believes  in  the  old-time  Trinity ;  he  freely  criticises 
the  Bible  and  treats  it  as  literature,  as  he  would  any  other 
book.  He  declares  that  the  old  Calvinism  leads  to  atheism 
and  says  it  has  got  to  be  given  up  in  order  to  save  Chris- 
tianity. He  is  frankly  Universalist  in  his  outlook  over  the 
next  world. 

These  men  our  seeker  would  find,  indicating  how  wide- 
spread these  different  varieties  of  belief  are. 

And  then  he  would  find  the  great  mass  of  people,  where .?. 
Outside  of  the  churches  he  would  find  Secularists,  noble, 
true,  honorable  men.  I  have  been  acquainted  with  hun- 
dreds of  them,  some  of  the  finest  men  who  ever  lived,  who 
believe  religiously,  if  we  may  use  the  Hibernicism,  that 
religion  is  a  thing  of  the  past ;  they  say  that  religion  is 
superstition,  and  it  is  being  outgrown,  and  that  humanity  is 
coming  to  take  its  place.  You  find  noble  men  like  Felix 
Adler  and  his  followers  here,  and  those  of  a  similar  name 
in  other  cities,  who  are  engaged  in  the  moral  training  and 
uplifting  of  the  world,  but  who  voluntarily  turn  their  backs 
on  what  we  call  religion. 

He  would  find  a  noble  body  of  agnostics.  I  am  not  an 
agnostic,  I  believe  it  is  false  science  and  bad  philosophy; 
but  I  cannot  treat  it  with  contempt  when  men  like  Huxley 
feel  that  since  this  great  infinite  universe  has  been  revealed 
they  are  overwhelmed  with  the  magnitude  of  it  and  must 
bow  their  heads  in  simple  humility  and  say  "  I  do  not  know." 


14  Religion  for  To-day 

Ask  him  about  God  :  "  I  do  not  know."  About  the  soul :  "  I 
do  not  know."  About  the  future  life :  ''  I  do  not  know."  He 
says,  "These  are  such  great  problems  I  have  given  them 
up ;  I  am  going  to  live  as  well  as  I  can  and  help  the  world 
as  well  as  I  can,  but  I  postpone  what  from  my  point  of  view 
is  a  needless  discussion." 

Then  he  would  find  a  great  body  of  men, —  thousands  on 
thousands  of  them  here  in  this  city  of  New  York,  bankers, 
lawyers,  merchants,  physicians, —  who  are  where  ?  They  say. 
Since  all  the  scientific  and  philosophic  doctors  disagree  and 
are  at  swords'  points,  what  is  the  use  of  my  wearying  my 
brain  about  it  at  all.?  They  will  help  the  ministers,  they 
will  help  the  churches  in  their  philanthropic  work  and 
think,  "  Let  them  believe  what  they  will  about  the  next  world, 
I  do  not  know  and  do  not  care;  I  am  going  to  do  as  well 
as  I  know,  I  am  going  to  live  a  clean  life  and  an  honest, 
because  that  is  the  only  sensible  one  for  a  man  to  live.  I 
am  going  to  do  what  I  can  to  relieve  the  burden  of  human 
sorrow ;  but  the  churches  can  go  their  own  way,  they  do 
not  interest  me,  they  do  not  feed  me,  they  do  not  help  me, 
and  it  seems  to  me  they  are  spending  most  of  the  time  in 
discussing  matters  which  are  not  practical,  and  which  the 
world    up    to    this    time  has    never   been    able    to    settle." 

This  is  the  way  great  masses  of  men  in  the  modern  world 
are  coming  to  feel. 

Now,  friends,  where  are  we  t  What  claim  do  we,  these 
few  Unitarian  Churches,  make?  what  claim  do  I  make,  on 
behalf  of  one  of  them  ? 

My  claim  may  seem  to  you  an  unreal  one,  an  unreason- 
able one,  may  seem  to  you  a  very  presumptuous  one ;  but  I 
believe,  friends,  with  my  whole  soul,  that  we  stand  for  the 
principles  which  are  to  rule  the  world  in  the  coming  thou- 


Present  Religious  Conditions  i  5 

sands  of  years.  For  why?  We  believe  in  and  respect  the 
heart,  the  emotional,  the  feeling  side  of  religion.  We  be- 
lieve also  in  and  respect  the  intellectual  side,  and  demand  for 
it  its  rights ;  and  we  believe  that  these  great  thousands  of 
people  have  gone  out  of  the  churches  because  there  was  not 
room  enough  in  the  churches  for  the  intellectual  develop- 
ment and  freedom  that  the  modern  world  demands. 

The  dome  of  the  coming  temple  of  God  must  be  as 
wide  as  the  sky.  Suppose  you  grant  freedom ;  is  there 
any  danger  that  we  are  going  to  fall  out  of  the  keeping 
of  or  wander  beyond  the  reach  of  the  Almighty?  The 
old  Psalmist  believes  more  than  that, — "  If  I  ascend  into 
heaven  Thou  art  there  ;  if  I  descend  into  the  abyss  Thou  art 
there ;  if  I  take  the  wings  of  the  morning  and  dwell  in  the 
uttermost  parts  of  the  sea,  even  there  Thy  hand  shall  lead 
me  and  Thy  right  hand  shall  hold  me." 

This  universe,  friends,  is  infinite.  God's  truth  is  infinite 
as  the  universe.  Draw  a  circle,  and  however  large  it  may 
be  in  circumference,  however  wide  in  its  diameter,  if  you  set 
any  limits  you  fence  out  more  of  God  and  truth  than  you 
fence  in ;  for  God  is  infinite  and  his  truth  is  as  wide  as  his 
universe,  which  he  thrills  and  permeates  in  every  part. 

I  believe,  then,  in  preserving  all  the  reverences,  all  the 
worships,  all  the  loves,  all  the  aspirations,  all  the  emotions, 
all  the  impulses  of  the  past  and  of  the  human  heart  to-day ; 
and  I  believe  that  the  calm,  clear,  trained  intellect  should  sit 
on  high  and  in  view  of  the  wide  range  of  things,  looking 
before  and  after,  should  guide  all  these  mighty  forces  to  their 
beneficent  and  magnificent  ends. 

I  believe  in  God  as  I  never  believed  in  him  before, —  I 
shall  have  occasion  before  I  am  through  with  this  series  of 
sermons  to  tell  you  how  and  why.     I  believe  in  religion  as 


1 6  Religion  for  To-day 

I  never  believed  in  it  before.  I  shall  also  tell  you  concern- 
ing this,  how  and  why.  I  believe  in  revelation,  an  infallible 
revelation  of  divine  truth,  so  infallible  that  no  intelligent  man 
can  doubt  or  deny.  I  believe  in  incarnation,  the  coming  of 
God  into  the  human  in  a  more  magnificent  and  grander  way 
than  I  ever  believed  in  all  the  days  when  I  held  to  the 
theology  of  the  past.  I  believe  in  the  human  soul,  its  son- 
ship  to  God,  the  eternal  spiritual  Father.  I  believe  in 
communion  between  the  child-soul  and  the  Infinite  soul 
that  ever  folds  us  in  his  arms.     As  Tennyson  says, 

"  Speak  to  him,  thou,  for  He  hears, 
And  spirit  with  spirit  may  meet. 
Closer  is  He  than  breathing 
And  nearer  than  hands  and  feet." 

I  believe,  not  in  the  resurrection  of  the  body, —  for  we 
have  left  behind  us,  those  of  us  who  have  fifty  years,  several 
bodies  already  which  we  would  not  care  to  have  resurrected. 
We  do  not  believe  that  the  soul  goes  down,  and  so  it  does 
not  need  to  come  up  again.  We  believe  in  the  ascent  of 
the  soul  at  death.  I  do  not  believe  in  death,  friends.  I 
believe  in  life ;  for  death  is  nothing  more  than  going  to 
sleep  at  night  to  wake  up  again  in  the  morning;  and  I  am 
not  afraid  of  it  any  longer. 

I  believe,  then,  in  the  eternal  life,  in  the  eternal  opportu- 
nity and  the  eternal  advance.  These  are  some  hints  as  to 
the  position  occupied  by  this  little  group  of  churches,  that 
claim  to  represent  and  speak  for  the  new  Word  of  God  to 
the  modern  world.  We  are  in  the  minority.  And  we  would 
say,  with  humility  and  not  in  boasting,  that  all  leadership  is 
always  in  the  minority.  Notice  an  army  on  the  march ;  the 
vanguard  is  always  few,  then  comes  the  main  body,  and  then 


Present  Religious  Conditions  ly 

the  stragglers  and  camp  followers  in  the  rear.  The  leaders 
of  the  world  in  any  department, —  education,  government, 
science,  art,  philosophy,  ethics,  religion, —  the  leaders  of  the 
world  are  always  few.  When  the  main  body  of  the  army 
gets  to  where  the  vanguard  is  to-day,  the  vanguard  will  still 
be  ahead  and  in  the  minority  forever. 

I  believe,  then,  that  we  represent  the  living  God,  the 
newer  and  truer  and  deeper  revelation,  the  higher  and 
broader  incarnation,  the  soul  and  the  eternal  hope.  If  you 
choose  to  follow  me  as  I  take  up  some  of  these  great  prob- 
lems one  after  another,  you  will  find  that  there  is  little  that 
is  negative,  much  that  is  positive,  and  that  we  stand  for  the 
larger  and  grander  hope  of  the  larger  and  grander  Church 
that  is  to  be. 


CAUSES  OF  PRESENT  RELIGIOUS  UNREST. 


Our  fathers  knew  very  little  about  this  world,  but  they 
assumed  that  they  knew  all  about  the  next. 

Last  Sunday  morning  I  touched  on  the  present  conditions 
of  uncertainty,  confusion,  and  contradiction  as  manifested  in 
the  religious  thought  and  condition  of  the  world.  It  is  my 
purpose  this  morning  to  point  out  certain  things  that  have 
happened  in  recent  times  to  make  this  confusion,  contradic- 
tion, necessary, —  perfectly  natural.  In  order  to  do  this,  I 
shall  need  to  go  back  for  a  little  and  outline  that  which  you 
are  so  familiar  with  that  you  very  rarely  estimate  its  signifi- 
cance ;  that  is,  the  conditions  of  human  thought  two  or  three 
hundred  years  ago  concerning  the  universe  and  man  and 
destiny. 

You  find  these  pictured  graphically,  with  poetic  power  and 
beauty,  in  the  *'  Divina  Commedia  "  of  Dante,  so  far  as  the 
spirit  world  is  concerned.  You  find  a  completer  conception 
still  in  the  "  Paradise  Lost  "  and  the  "  Paradise  Regained  " 
of  Milton  ;  and  Milton's  great  epic,  or  his  two  epics,  rather, 
have  the  advantage  for  our  purpose  over  the  work  of  Dante, 
of  covering  the  entire  scheme  of  this  life  as  well  as  of  the 
other, —  that  is,  taking  in  what  people  then  believed  they 
knew  to  be  God's  eternal  plan  and  purpose  in  human  crea- 
tion and  in  human  redemption. 

Let  us  notice  for  a  moment  the  barest,  simplest  outlines 
of  that  scheme. 


Causes  of  Present  Religious   Unrest  19 

Our  fathers  thought  they  knew  what  God  was  doing  in  the 
eternity  that  preceded  the  creation  of  the  world.  They  tell 
us,  in  their  theological  creeds  and  schemes,  how  the  three 
persons  of  the  Trinity  consulted  together,  entered  into  cove- 
nant with  each  other,  and  made  out  the  general  plan  of 
human  history. 

There  was  war  in  heaven.  A  third  part  of  the  angels, 
following  Satan  in  revolt  against  divine  authority,  was  cast 
out  into  the  abyss.  To  fill  this  vacancy  in  heaven  so  that 
the  number  of  those  who  should  see,  rejoice  in,  and  utter 
the  divine  glory  might  not  suffer  by  diminution,  God  deter- 
mined to  create  this  world  and  humanity. 

Scarcely  was  his  work  completed  before  it  was  invaded  by 
the  leader  of  those  who  had  been  in  revolt  on  high.  Sin 
blighted  God's  plan  and  purpose.  Our  first  parents  fell; 
they  were  cast  out  of  Paradise.  All  their  descendants  were 
doomed  through  all  time  not  only,  but  all  eternity. 

God  then  decided  that  he  would  choose  certain  ones  out 
of  this  vast  mass  to  be  saved,  to  be  taken  to  heaven.  He 
sent  his  angels  with  his  messages.  He  selected  one  man, 
then  his  children,  then  the  nation  that  was  born  of  them,  to 
be  the  recipients  of  his  favor,  to  be  taught  and  trained.  He 
sent  prophets.  In  the  fulness  of  time  He  came  himself  in 
the  second  person  of  the  Trinity,  lived  here  in  the  world, 
was  crucified,  descended  into  hell,  suffered  in  hell  all  the 
pangs  that  those  who  were  to  be  saved  would  have  suf- 
fered, had  they  been  lost,  through  all  eternity.  This  suf- 
fering was  concentrated  into  three  days  and  nights.  Then 
he  broke  from  the  bounds  of  hell,  escaped,  and  ascended 
on  high. 

This  gospel  was  to  be  preached  among  all  nations. 
Those  who  were  elected  were  to  be  saved ;    the  rest  were  to 


20  Religion  for  To-day 

be  passed  by  and  permitted  to  illustrate  the  glory  of  God's 
justice,  as  the  saved  would  illustrate  the  glory  of  his  grace. 
Then  the  world  was  to  be  burned  up ;  that  which  had  been 
created  was  to  be  destroyed,  and  the  saved  and  the  lost 
were  to  inhabit  their  fixed  places  and  conditions  throughout 
eternity. 

This  is  the  general  scheme  which  our  fathers  believed 
they  knew.  It  is  the  scheme  outlined,  as  clear  cut  as  an 
intaglio,  in  the  great  work  of  Milton.  And  Milton's  work 
was  not  poetry  only,  it  crystallized  popular  thought  and 
what  was  practically  universal  Protestant  belief. 

The  people  rested  in  this  for  several  hundred  years. 
This  was  the  peace,  the  quiescent  condition  of  things,  to 
which  I  referred  last  Sunday;  but  that  peace  no  longer 
remains.  You  and  I  are  not  responsible  for  the  breaking 
up  of  that  peace :  we  simply  observe,  study,  try  to  find  out 
what  it  means  so  that  we  may  comprehend  our  present  duty. 

Now  I  wish  you  to  note  some  few  things  that  have 
happened  in  this  modern  world  to  account  for  the  break-up 
of  common  belief  in  this  once  generally  accepted  scheme 
of  things. 

What  has  happened  t  I  wish,  before  I  point  out  specifi- 
cally the  things  that  have  taken  place,  to  call  your  atten- 
tion to  one  or  two  facts  and  principles,  and  make  them  as 
emphatic  as  I  can. 

You  are  to  note,  if  you  will, —  and  I  beg  that  you  will, 
because,  if  you  do  not,  you  will  misunderstand,  and  then,  if 
you  speak  of  it,  you  will  misrepresent  me, —  I  beg  you  to 
note  that  religion,  as  the  word  is  popularly  used,  includes 
two  quite  distinct  things :  First  it  means  the  spirit,  the  life. 
Then  it  means  a  body  of  thought,  of  intellectual  conception, 
of  dogmatic  statement.     And  I  beg  you  to  notice  that  the 


Causes   of  Present  Religions   Unrest  21 

body  may  grow,  may  change,  may  be  completely  outgrown, 
and  the  spirit  not  only  not  die,  but  only  become  grander 
and  finer  through  the  process. 

Take  an  illustration.  My  personal  identity  has  remained 
unchanged  from  the  time  when  I  was  a  little  babe  in  my 
mother's  arms, —  through  childhood,  through  youth,  through 
young  manhood,  through  mature  manhood ;  and  if  I  live 
long  enough  it  will  remain  unchanged  through  old  age  and 
even  to  the  time  when  I  discard  this  body  altogether. 

And  I  beg  you  to  note  another  fact.  During  this  time, 
while  my  soul  has  maintained  its  personal  identity, — 
though  I  trust  it  has  grown  and  deepened  and  heightened 
and  become  a  little  sweeter  and  nobler, —  I  have  not  only 
modified  my  body,  but  I  have  successively  discarded  at 
least  ten  or  fifteen  entire  bodies. 

The  identity  then  and  the  growth  of  the  soul  do  not 
depend  upon  keeping  the  body  unchanged,  or  even  upon 
maintaining  the  same  body. 

I  wish  now  that  you  shall  note  carefully,  before  I  pro- 
ceed any  farther,  one  more  fact.  I  have  heard  it  said  a 
great  many  times  that  the  minister  makes  a  mistake  when 
he  introduces  anything  touching  science  into  the  pulpit; 
that  the  lecture-room  is  the  place  for  science ;  that  it  is 
irrelevant  in  the  pulpit,  which  ought  to  be  devoted  to 
religion. 

Remember,  however,  friends,  what  I  have  just  said :  that 
religion  is  made  up  of  two  parts,  a  soul  and  a  body ;  and 
the  body  of  every  religion  that  ever  existed  on  the  face  of 
the  earth  from  the  beginning  of  human  history  until  now 
is  pure  and  simple  science, —  must  be  in  the  nature  of 
things. 

Did  you  never  notice  that  this  Bible  begins  with  science  ? 


22  Religion  for  To-day 

The  first  thing  in  it  is  science.  Is  not  the  old  Hebrew 
conception  of  the  creation  of  the  universe  and  man,  the 
method  of  creation,  just  as  much  science  as  Darwinism  is 
science,  or  chemistry  is  science,  or  geology  is  science  ?  It 
is  all  science,  and  nothing  else.  Only  it  is  crude,  tradi- 
tional, childish  science,  the  science  of  the  childhood  world, 
not  even  Hebrew  in  its  origin,  but  borrowed  from  the  Per- 
sians or  the  Babylonians.  It  is  simply  what  came  to  be 
the  Hebrew  traditional  stojy  such  as  every  nation  on  the 
face  of  the  earth  has  had  and  told. 

Let  us  remember,  then,  that  all  our  theologies,  however 
old  they  may  be,  though  we  may  have  forgotten  all  about 
it, —  all  our  theologies  spring  out  of  scientific  conceptions 
of  things,  of  necessity  must.  So  that  a  minister  to-day  is 
only  doing  what  ministers  in  all  ages  have  done  if  he 
appeals  to  the  scientific  conception  of  things.  It  is  simply 
a  question  as  to  whether  he  is  to  deal  with  that  which  is 
true  and  demonstrated  science  or  whether  he  is  to  deal  with 
the  exploded  scientific  conceptions  of  the  past  which  the 
world,  at  least  outside  of  the  churches,  has  long  ago  out- 
grown. 

Now  what  has  happened  ?  In  the  first  place,  since  this 
scheme  of  theology  which  I  have  outlined  took  shape  in 
the  minds  of  men,  we  have  discovered  a  new  universe. 

Let  me  indicate  what  it  means.  We  are  a  part  of  it,  we 
are  in  the  drift  and  swim  so  that  we  do  not  notice  its  signifi- 
cance, the  natural  and  necessary  result  of  the  great  facts 
involved.  We  do  not  half  appreciate  how  wonderful  the 
universe  is.  We  talk  about  the  sun's  rising  and  setting, 
though  we  know  it  does  neither.  We  constantly  find  our- 
selves holding  Ptolemaic  conceptions  from  which  we  are  not 
yet  free.     How  young  is  the  Copernican  universe  in  which 


Causes  of  Present  Religions   Unrest  23 

we  are  living,  and  how  great  is  it  compared  with  the 
Ptolemaic  conceptions  in  which  our  theology  grew  up,  of 
which  it  is  a  part  and  to  which  it  fitted ! 

Let  me  indicate.  It  was  thirty-six  years  after  the  town 
of  Boston  was  settled  when  Milton  in  London  took  out  a 
license  permitting  him  to  publish  ''  Paradise  Lost."  "  Para- 
dise Lost"  has  as  its  frame- work  the  Ptolemaic  universe. 
Milton  had  heard  about  the  Copernican  universe  just  as 
thousands  of  people  to-day  have  heard  about  Darwinism. 
We  are  not  sure  as  to  whether  he  accepted  it.  At  least 
he  did  not  regard  it  as  best  fitted  for  his  purpose ;  so  he 
adapted  his  epic  to  the  Ptolemaic  universe,  which  was  the 
commonly  accepted  one  of  the  time. 

What  was  that  universe  ?  I  cannot  go  into  an  elaborate  de- 
scription of  it  now.  I  simply  wish  to  tell  you  that  the  earth 
was  fixed  at  the  centre,  that  there  were  concentric  spheres, 
as  real  as  a  series  of  glass  globes  inside  of  each  other,  and 
to  these  spheres  were  fixed  the  moon,  then  the  sun  and  the 
planets ;  and  then  to  a  sphere  outside  of  these  were  attached 
the  fixed  stars,  all  of  them  in  the  same  plane. 

And  how  large  was  this  universe  ?  It  was  not  nearly  so 
large,  friends,  as  we  know  to-day  the  orbit  of  the  moon 
to  be.  The  entire  world  of  Milton  was  smaller  than  the 
orbit  of  the  moon ;  for  he  tells  us  that  when  the  angels  were 
cast  out  of  heaven  it  took  them  only  nine  days  and  nights  to 
fall  clear  to  the  bottom  of  the  universe. 

How  large  is  the  universe  to-day?  Can  I  give  you  an 
illustration  that  shall  set  your  thought  free  1 

Let  us  start  with  our  solar  system.  Look  up  at  night  to 
the  sky.  As  we  survey  the  scene,  this  solar  system  of  ours, 
the  sun  and  its  attending  planets,  looks  as  if  packed  in 
thick  in  a  mass  of  other  stars.     And   yet  a  little   fleet  of 


24  Religion  for  To-day 

yachts  in  the  middle  of  the  Atlantic,  with  not  a  living  thing 
between  it  and  all  its  shores,  would  be  crowded  in  compari- 
son with  the  isolation  and  loneliness  of  our  sun  with  its 
attendant  planets. 

It  takes  light,  they  tell  us,  about  eight  minutes  and  a  half 
to  travel  from  the  sun  to  the  earth,  something  like  ninety- 
two  and  a  half  millions  of  miles.  Let  this  same  light  leave 
the  outermost  member  of  our  solar  system  and  travel 
towards  the  nearest  star,  and  it  will  have  to  speed  on 
its  lightning-like  flight  for  three  years  and  a  half  before 
it  reaches  our  next-door  neighbor.  And  when  you  are 
there,  after  that  journey  of  three  years  and  a  half,  you  are 
only  standing  on  the  threshold  and  looking  out  in  every 
direction  along  star-lighted  pathways  that  reach  on,  and  on, 
and  on  to  infinity. 

This  is  the  universe  that  has  taken  the  place  of  the  one 
in  which  our  little,  petty,  crude,  ignorant,  man-made  theo- 
logical schemes  have  grown.  The  old  theology  was  a  part 
of  the  Ptolemaic  universe,  fitted  as  a  picture  in  a  frame, 
belonging  to  it.  But  it  is  utterly  impossible  that  it  should 
continue  to  live  in  this  Copernican  universe  that  has  taken 
its  place. 

There  is  no  room  in  this  universe  for  any  single  one  of 
the  conceptions  that  made  up  the  old-time  scheme. 

Another  thing  has  happened.  Although  Luther  and  his 
compeers,  as  well  as  the  great  Catholic  authorities  of  his 
day,  attacked  the  teachings  of  Copernicus  with  the  utmost 
bitterness,  claiming  that  they  were  atheistic,  and  that  in 
them  was  the  seed  of  destruction  to  the  theology  which  he 
believed  to  be  true, —  still,  in  the  main,  people  did  not  com- 
prehend what  was  going  on  any  more  than  they  do  to-day, 
and  the  old  belief  continued  in  the  popular  mind.     But  the 


Causes  of  Present  Religions   Unrest  25 

process  of  its  disintegration  was  begun,  and  it  is  going  o» 
to-day. 

When  Newton  discovered  the  law  of  gravity,  he  again  wasJ' 
attacked,  because  it  was  said  he  was  taking  the  management 
of  the  universe  out  of  the  hands  of  God  and  putting  it  into 
the  keeping  of  a  law.  And  there  is  a  great  deal  of  such 
shallow  talk  going  on  in  the  modern  world, —  as  though 
people  had  not  thought  deeply  enough  to  know  that  law  is^ 
only  a  name  for  an  eternal  process ;  and  that  that  process 
can  be  nothing  else  than  one  of  the  manifestations  of  the 
present,  living,  tireless  God. 

Another  thing  happened, —  the  science  of  geology.  And 
let  me  ask  right  here,  Is  it  not  strange  that  people  do  not 
stop  long  enough  to  think  with  a  little  reverence  and  a 
little  care }  If  we  can  read  accurately  what  has  been  writ- 
ten on  the  rock  record  under  our  feet,  we  can  say  as  the 
old  astronomer  Kepler  said  when  he  discovered  the  law  of 
planetary  motion,  "  O  God,  I  think  over  again  thy  thoughts 
after  thee," 

If,  I  say,  we  can  read  the  rock  record  under  our  feet, 
we  are  reading  what  God  has  written  in  very  truth,  as  if 
by  his  own  immediate  finger.  It  is  God's  work  and  God's 
record  of  his  work ;  and,  if  it  does  not  happen  to  agree  with 
what  some  unknown  man  imagined  to  be  the  truth  two  or 
three  or  five  thousand  years  ago,  which  shall  we  accept, — 
the  present  God  speaking  to  us,  or  what  somebody  thought 
about  it  thousands  of  years  ago  in  the  days  of  the  world's 
ignorance,  when  all  the  while  we  do  not  know  who  that 
somebody  was,  or  what  his  source  of  information  might  be  ? 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  there  grew  up  this  science  of  geology 
based  on  the  facts  as  to  God's  method  of  making  his  world. 
It  was  a  part  of  the  old  scheme  that  God  made  the  world 


26  Religion  for  To-day 

suddenly  out  of  nothing  in  six  days  and  then  rested.  Geol- 
ogy discovered  that  the  process  of  creation  has  been  going 
•on  for  millions  of  years,  and  that  it  is  going  on  to-day  in 
precisely  the  same  way  that  it  has  always  been  going  on. 
That  is,  that  creation  is  a  continuous  process,  always  begun 
'and  never  finished. 

We  discovered  that  the  order  of  the  creative  world  was 
not  the  order  of  the  first  chapters  of  Genesis.  We  discov- 
ered that  there  was  a  mistake  in  the  popular  theological 
conception  both  as  to  the  method  and  the  time ;  and  there 
is  no  question,  friends,  as  to  which  is  true.  There  have 
been  many  and  many  vain  attempts  made  to  reconcile  be- 
tween the  Book  and  the  rocks,  but  they  have  all  crumbled 
to  pieces  at  the  touch  of  anything  like  honest  and  open- 
eyed  investigation,  until  at  last  the  scholarship  of  the  world 
knows  that  God  has  told  the  truth  in  his  rocks,  whatever 
may  become  of  certain  old-time  traditions. 

Another  science  has  grown  up, —  the  science  of  archaeol- 
ogy. And  what  has  that  taught  us  ?  As  geology  taught  us 
the  antiquity  of  the  earth,  this  has  taught  us  the  antiquity 
of  man.  We  know  now  —  it  is  no  question  for  intelligent 
people  to  discuss  —  that  man  was  not  created  six  thousand 
years  ago,  nor  ten  thousand  years  ago.  We  know  that  he 
has  been  on  this  planet  for  two  or  three  hundred  thousand 
years  at  least. 

So  this  part  of  the  old  theological  scheme  has  also  had  to 
be  given  up. 

Another  thing  has  happened.  There  has  sprung  up  the 
great  universal  philosophy  and  science  that  goes  by  the 
name  of  *' evolution."  The  first  propounder  of  this  in 
the  modern  world  was  Herbert  Spencer.  His  work  in- 
cludes  the   worlds    as   well   as    man.     Then,    occupying   a 


Causes  of  Present  Religions   Unrest  27 

province  of  this  universal  dominion,  came  the  work  of 
Mr.  Darwin,  published  in  1859.  Mr.  Darwin  wrought  out 
his  great  truths  in  the  domain  of  what  is  called  the  science 
of  biology, —  the  method  of  the  development  of  life. 

And  now,  friends,  here  again  it  is  no  longer  a  question ; 
it  is  not  something  that  intelligent  and  educated  people 
debate.  Now  and  then,  indeed,  prominent  theologians, — 
I  will  not  name  any  names,  because  I  do  not  wish  to  mar 
what  I  am  saying  by  a  ripple  of  laughter  over  anything, — 
prominent  theologians,  who  show  by  the  first  words  they 
utter  that  they  do  not  know  what  they  are  talking  about, 
undertake  to  discuss  it ;  but  there  is  not  a  competent  and 
free-minded  intelligence  to-day  on  the  face  of  the  earth  that 
does  not  know  that  the  general  theory  of  evolution  is  as  much 
established  science  as  is  the  Copernican  theory  of  the  uni- 
verse. There  may  be  any  number  of  questions  about  sub- 
sidiary matters,  matters  of  detail;  but  the  great  general 
truth  is  at  last  accepted. 

What  does  this  mean  ?  It  means  that  man  was  not  cre- 
ated suddenly,  outright,  in  a  Garden  of  Eden  or  anywheres 
else.  It  means  that  man  belongs  to  the  great  order  of  life- 
development,  which  began  on  the  far-off  shores  of  primeval 
seas,  and  has  developed  through  fishes,  through  reptiles, 
through  birds,  through  mammals,  up  to  man,  who  leads  the 
march  of  life  in  its  so-far  advance. 

Let  me  interject  one  thing  right  here.  There  are  thou- 
sands of  people  in  •  the  modern  world  who  still  suppose 
that  Mr.  Darwin  teaches  that  we  are  descended  from  the 
ape.  He  teaches  nothing  of  the  sort ;  and  no  inteUigent 
man  ever  supposed  he  did, —  at  least,  no  one  who  has  taken 
the  trouble  to  find  out. 

Mr.  Darwin  teaches  that  we  are  descended,  or  ascended, 


28  Religion  for  To-day 

from  the  animal ;  and  it  is  true,  too,  established  over  and 
over  again,  so  that  no  competent  thinker  to-day  ventures  to 
doubt  the  general  fact. 

What  does  this  mean  ?  I  have  no  time  to  enter  fully 
into  it  to-day  ;  it  means,  however,  that  there  never  has  been 
any  fall  of  man,  but  that  there  has  been  ascent  from  the 
beginning.  I  shall  go  into  this  more  at  length,  and  make 
it,  I  trust,  perfectly  clear  before  I  am  through  with  this 
course  of  sermons. 

But  let  me  say  right  here  that  this  one  fact  alone, 
logically  carried  out,  compels  a  complete  reconstruction  of 
all  the  theological  theories  of  the  past ;  for  there  is  not  a 
single  one  of  the  doctrines  that  enter  into  and  make  up  the 
schemes  that  have  been  taught  by  the  churches  for  hundreds 
of  years  that  did  not  come  into  being  as  part  of  a  plan  to 
save  man  from  the  fall.  If  there  has  been  no  fall,  if  evil 
is  to  be  explained,  as  I  believe  it  is,  in  entirely  another  way, 
then  all  these  doctrines  which  are  logically  a  necessary  part 
of  this  "  plan  of  salvation  "  must  be  reconsidered. 

I  have  no  time  to  go  into  that  any  further  to-day,  for  I 
must  mention  one  or  two  other  things  that  have  happened. 

When  England  first  made  conquest  of  India,  I  suppose 
there  were  very  few  people  in  the  world  who  had  any  idea 
that  any  important  intellectual  and  religious  results  were  to 
follow.  It  was  a  purely  commercial  venture  at  the  outset; 
but  what  did  it  mean  ? 

It  meant  the  discovery  of  the  Rig- Veda,  the  old  Sanscrit 
Bible  ;  and  it  was  the  beginning  of  a  series  of  discoveries, 
until  to-day  we  have  come  into  intelligent  contact  with  all 
the  great  religions  of  the  world,  and  we  have  studied  and 
translated  and  read  all  the  great  Bibles  of  the  world.  Do 
you  know  that  the  Buddhists  have  their   Bibles  which  they 


Causes  of  Present  Religious  Unrest  29 

believe  are  as  thoroughly  inspired  and  as  completely  in- 
fallible as  our  own  ?  And  this  same  thing  is  true  of  nearly 
all  the  great  religions.  And  let  us  frankly  admit  that  they 
have  precisely  the  same  reason  for  holding  their  belief  con- 
cerning their  Bibles  that  we  have  for  holding  ours  concern- 
ing our  Bible. 

We  have  thus  seen  religions  in  the  making,  we  have 
discovered  Bibles  in  process  of  growth,  and  we  have  learned 
what  I  hinted  last  Sunday,  or  a  Sunday  before,  that  Bibles 
do  not  create  religion,  but  that  religions  create  Bibles, —  as 
they  do  priesthoods  and  all  the  thousand  things  that  mani- 
fest and  express  the  religious  life. 

What  is  the  result  of  this  discovery  and  study  of  the 
world  religions  and  the  Bibles  of  the  world  ? 

When  I  was  a  boy  I  was  taught  that  the  religions  of  the 
world  were  divided  into  two  classes.  In  one  was  Chris- 
tianity alone,  called  the  "true"  religion.  In  the  other  class 
were  all  the  other  religions  of  the  world,  labelled  "false." 
I  was  taught  to  believe  that  they  were  the  invention  of 
devils,  or  the  perverted  and  evil  work  of  priesthoods  and 
wicked  men. 

But  what  does  the  intelligent  man  hold  to-day?  We 
believe,  as  Emerson  has  sung  so  beautifully,  that 

♦*  Out  of  the  heart  of  nature  rolled 
The  burdens  of  the  Bible  old,"— 

and  the  burdens  of  all  the  Bibles ;  and  we  believe  that  all  the 
religions  of  the  world  are  simply  the  earnest  attempts  —  on 
the  part  of  ignorant  and  foolish  people,  if  you  like,  but 
earnest  attempts,  the  best  they  were  capable  of  making  at 
the  time  —  to  find  God,  "feeling  after  him  who  is  not  far 
from  every  one  of  us." 


30  Religion  for  To-day 

If  they  have  not  been  able  to  speak  in  clear  language, 
they  have  lisped ;  they  may  not  have  said  the  words  that  we 
say  to-day,  but  they  have  said  the  best  words  they  knew. 
My  friend  and  fellow-worker,  Mr.  Collyer,  said  in  his 
prayer  this  morning  that  the  sweetest,  the  concentrated 
essence  of  all  religions  was  in  the  words,  "  our  Father." 
How  many  of  you  know  that  the  oldest  name  in  the  relig- 
ious literature  of  the  world,  in  this  old  Sanscrit  Bible 
to  which  I  referred  a  moment  ago,  is  "  Heaven-Father " } 
How  many  of  you  know  that  the  Greek  Zeus  pater  is  sim- 
ply the  Greek  equivalant  of  the  Sanscrit  Dyaus  pitarl  How 
many  of  you  know  that  the  word  Jupiter  is  only  the  Roman 
equivalent  of  Dyaus  pitar,  Heaven-Father,  the  old  name 
that  the  race  tried  to  lisp  in  its  childhood? 

We  no  longer  look,  then,  to  these  other  religions  from 
our  height  of  superiority,  treating  them  with  contempt  or 
regarding  them  as  utterly  evil  and  wicked.  We  believe  that 
God  hears  the  man  in  China,  the  man  in  India,  in  Central 
Africa,  in  the  Islands  of  the  Southern  Seas,  no  matter  what 
word  he  uses  when  he  tries  to  give  utterance  to  the  name 
of  the  invisible  Father  that  he  thinks  of  as  his  creator  and 
the  maker  of  all  this  wonderful  universe  of  ours. 

There  is  another  thing  that  has  happened.  I  hinted  at 
this  in  another  connection  not  a  great  while  ago.  Men  and 
women  have  become  civilized  in  some  parts  of  the  world ; 
and  civilization  means  not  only  truer  thinking,  it  means  a 
more  humane  feeling,  it  means  justice,  it  means  something 
of  tenderness  and  pity;  and,  as  the  result  of  this,  many 
parts  of  the  old  creeds  have  been  put  one  side,  though 
there  has  been  no  formal  abandonment  of  them,  because 
the  civilized,  tender,  just,  loving,  helpful  man  no  longer 
could  hold  them. 


Causes  of  Present  Religious   Unrest  31 

I  was  talking  with  an  orthodox  lady  during  the  past  week. 
I  did  not  introduce  the  subject, —  I  never  presume  to  intro- 
duce these  things  in  private  houses  unless  I  am  asked, — 
and  she  spoke  of  one  of  the  very  fundamental  points  of  the 
old  creed  which  is  still  taught,  and  the  foundation  stone  of 
the  church  which  she  attends,  as  something  "horrible" 
which  she  no  longer  believed.  I  raised  the  question,  which 
she  frankly  admitted  she  had  never  considered,  as  to  whether 
she  could  give  that  up  and  still  keep  all  the  rest  which  de- 
pended on  it,  and  would  never  have  been  heard  of  if  it  had 
not  been  there. 

There  are  many  of  these  points,  and  many  of  them  are 
given  up ;  but  people  do  not  carry  out  the  lesson  logically, 
of  which  this  case  just  cited  is  a  sample.  But  quietly, 
perhaps  unconsciously,  one  inherited  opinion  after  another 
is  dropped,  without  thought  or  care  as  to  whether  the  rest 
can  be  consistently  held  or  not. 

And  so  the  process  goes  on, —  that  process  which  has 
caused  all  this  uncertainty,  confusion,  and  contradiction. 
Some  people  in  some  churches  think  a  little  way  and  surren- 
der certain  points;  other  people  in  other  churches  think  a 
little  further  and  surrender  a  little  more,  grasp  grander 
things  in  place  of  them.  And  hence  we  see  all  these  con- 
fused and  irresponsible  beliefs  which  we  find  held  by  the 
people  of  the  present  day. 

Now,  friends,  a  word  at  the  end.  What  does  all  this 
mean  .?  Does  it  mean  that  religion  is  in  danger  1  So  far 
from  that,  friends,  I  believe  that  religion  is  simply  struggling 
to-day  to  free  itself  from  these  encumbrances  which  hold  it 
down  and  hinder  its  growth  towards  the  light,  sunshine,  and 
free  air,  up  towards  God's  magnificent  heaven. 

It  means  simply  a  change  of  the  theological  conception 


32  Religion  for  To-day 

and  framework  of  things.  It  means  that  the  world  of  to-day, 
wiser  in  every  other  respect  than  was  the  universe  of  the 
past,  is  daring  to  let  in  the  light,  daring  to  think  and  accept 
the  grander  truth  which  God  is  revealing  to  his  children. 

As  I  have  already  said  in  other  connections,  I  believe 
that,  instead  of  religion  passing  away,  we  are  in  the  time 
of  its  re-birth.  There  is  to  be  a  more  magnificent  religion, 
a  grander  Church  than  the  past  has  ever  dreamed  of.  We 
simply  outgrow  that  which  is  crude,  which  is  ignorant, 
which  is  cruel,  which  is  untenable  in  broad,  clear  thinking. 
We  are  getting  ready  to  build  the  new  temple  in  which  God 
shall  manifest  himself  as  he  has  not  in  the  past,  and  that 
shall  be  full  of  light  and  love  and  peace  for  all  mankind. 


IS   RELIGION   DYING? 


Any  one  whose  studies  include  in  their  range  the  whole 
line  of  human  progress  from  the  beginning  until  to-day 
will  become  familiar  with  the  fact  that  religions  are  not 
immortal.  Hundreds  of  religions  have  been  born,  have 
grown  old,  have  died.  The  entire  pathway  of  human  ad- 
vance is  strewn  with  the  images  of  dead  gods,  of  temples  in 
ruins,  of  altars  crumbling  to  decay,  with  books  once  held 
sacred  as  containing  the  very  infallible  word  of  life,  but 
now  looked  upon  only  as  curiosities  of  ancient  thought. 

One  needs,  of  course,  to  take  a  long  survey  of  human 
history  to  note  how  true  this  is.  Two  thousand  years 
seem  a  great  while ;  but  when  we  remember  that  man  has 
been  on  this  earth  at  least  three  hundred  thousand  years, 
and  has  been  thinking,  feeling;  fearing,  hoping,  through  all 
those  years,  two  thousand  seem  only  a  little  while. 

If  you  wish  to  note  how  religions  that  once  towered  on 
high  and  seemed  impregnable  from  all  assault,  even  the 
assault  of  time,  have  fallen,  you  may  stand  amid  the  ruins 
of  Karnac  or  Baalbec,  you  may  wander  through  India  and 
note  the  remains  of  temples  that  once  represented  religions 
that  were  followed  reverently  by  millions  of  worshippers. 

Religions  then  are  not  immortal.  But  it  is  very  different 
with  the  word  when  you  drop  the  final  "s."  Religions  die; 
religion  is  simply  reborn  and  goes  on  forever.  It  is  in  the 
spiritual   realm   only   what  it   is  fabled    to    be   in   earthly 


34  Religiofi  for  To-day 

empire  :  "  The  king  is  dead  !  "  cries  the  herald  ;  and  then 
before  the  sound  of  that  call  has  ceased,  he  cries  again, 
"  Long  live  the  king ! "  The  persons  die,  the  king  never. 
So  it  is  true  of  religions  that  they  die,  but  rehgion  never. 
Religion,  out  of  what  is  called  death, —  or  thought  to  be 
death  by  the  friends  or  the  enemies  of  any  particular 
religion, —  religion  finds  in  this  experience  only  a  renais- 
sance. 

In  order  that  I  may  make  this  clear,  that  we  may  answer 
our  question  as  to  whether  religion  is  dying,  and  may  be 
perfectly  certain  of  our  ground,  I  need  only  to  give  you 
something  approaching  an  adequate  definition  of  religion. 
People  who  think  that  religion  is  dying,  good  people  who 
are  afraid  religion  is  dying,  have  simply  not  thought  deeply 
enough  or  carefully  enough  to  know  what  it  is  that  is  really 
taking  place.  Let  us  then,  if  we  may,  try  to  get  a  definition 
of  religion,  and  then  we  can  easily  comprehend  what  it  is 
that  is  going  on. 

I  wish  first  to  give  a  definition,  as  a  scientist  or  a  philos- 
opher would,  in  abstract  terms.  I  ask  your  patience  for 
a  moment  while  I  do  that ;  and  then  I  shall  try  to  translate 
it  into  the  concrete,  so  that  it  will  be  very  easily  apprehen- 
sible by  anybody. 

Religion  —  and  now  let  me  say  I  am  not  defining  my 
religion  or  your  religion ;  I  am  not  defining  the  religion  of 
the  Episcopalian  or  the  religion  of  the  Presbyterian;  I  am 
not  defining  Christianity,  I  am  not  defining  any  particular 
religion.  I  wish  to  create,  if  I  may,  a  general  definition 
that  will  cover  and  include  any  religion  that  ever  existed  or 
can  exist ;  just  as  a  scientist,  for  example,  when  he  wishes 
to  define  the  vertebrate,  does  not  select  any  particular  type 
of  vertebrates  but  gives  the  characteristics  which  are  com- 


Is  Religion  Dying?  35 

mon  to  all  vertebrates.  So  I  wish  to  give  you  those  charac- 
teristics which  you  will  see  in  a  moment  are  common  to  all 
religions. 

In  the  first  place  then,  religion  is  man's  thought  concern- 
ing the  relation  which  exists  between  himself  and  the  power 
that  is  manifested  in  the  universe,  whatever  his  interpreta- 
tion of  that  power  may  be.     First,  the  thought. 

Secondly,  religion  is  emotion, —  the  feeling  which  accom- 
panies this  thought  and  which  takes  its  characteristics  from 
it.  That  is,  if  the  thought  is  high  and  noble  the  feeling 
will  correspond ;  if  the  thought  is  poor  and  mean  the  feeling 
will  be  petty,  fearful,  grovelling. 

In  the  third  place,  the  thought  and  the  feeling  always 
incarnate  themselves  in  outward  forms,  manifest  them- 
selves in  things,  customs,  practices. 

There  is  my  abstract  definition.  Now  let  me  translate  it 
for  you  into  the  concrete. 

Take  one  typical  illustration, —  for  it  is  one  of  the  grand- 
est religions  of  the  world,  and  not  being  our  own  we  can 
look  upon  it  without  any  prejudice, —  take  the  religion  of 
the  Hebrews ;  and  let  us  go  back  to  the  time  of  Solomon  and 
the  magnificence  of  his  temple.  Suppose  we  could  visit 
Jerusalem  and  see  it  in  the  condition  in  which  it  was  at  that 
time.  We  should  be  struck  by  the  glory  of  its  great  temple, 
crowning  the  top  of  Mount  Moriah ;  we  should  see  the 
people  thronging  the  gates,  coming  up  for  some  one  of  the 
great  festivals  from  all  over  the  country.  When  we  joined 
that  throng  and  entered  the  precincts  of  the  temple  we  should 
find  its  courts  full  of  priests  engaged  in  their  various  offices. 
We  should  find  the  blood  of  bulls  and  of  goats  and  birds 
sacrificed  running  down  from  the  altar.  We  should  hear  the 
chanting  of  some  one  of  the  old  Psalms  by  the  temple  choir. 


3^  Religio7i  for  To-day 

We  should  first  see  the  High  Priest  enter  the  Holy  of  Holies, 
and  then  come  out  and  sprinkle  the  blood  of  the  sacrifice 
upon  the  people  and  pronounce  absolution  from  their  sins. 
We  should  see  this  whole  external  manifestation  of  the 
Hebrew  religion.  It  would  include  such  Scriptures  as  up 
to  that  period  had  become  sacred  in  the  popular  mind. 

Here  is  the  external  incarnation  that  I  referred  to  of  the 
thought  and  the  feeling  of  the  Hebrew  people. 

Now  let  us  analyse  a  little  deeper.  Beyond  this  incarna- 
tion we  should  find  that  there  were  certain  theories  which 
were  held  by  the  priests  and  taught  to  the  people  as  the 
truth, —  the  intellectual  side  of  their  religion.  And  what 
and  how  much  does  this  include  ?  It  includes  a  theory  of 
the  universe.  And  note  right  here,  friends,  that  there  never 
has  been  a  religion,  from  the  beginning  of  the  world  up  to 
to-day,  that  did  not  have  as  a  frame-work  a  cosmology,  that 
is,  a  scientific  theory  of  things.  That  is  where  all  religions 
start. 

The  Hebrew  people  had  certain  beliefs  as  to  how  the 
world  was  created,  what  kind  of  a  world  it  was.  They  had 
a  picture  of  it  in  their  minds.  They  had  certain  ideas 
of  the  origin  and  nature  of  man, —  ideas  as  to  the  relation 
in  which  men  stood  to  their  God,  what  their  God  wanted 
them  to  do,  and  why  he  wanted  them  to  do  it.  Here  was 
the  intellectual  side,  you  will  see,  what  we  to-day  call  the 
"theology"  of  it. 

Then  the  third  element  I  spoke  of,  emotion,  fear,  the  awe, 
the  reverence,  the  worship,  the  love,  the  delight  in  their 
God  that  the  Psalmist  so  frequently  sings ;  all  this  is  the 
feeling  side  of  religion. 

Now  note,  friends,  every  religion  that  ever  existed  was 
made   up  of  these  three   elements, —  the  thought  side,  the 


Is  Religion  Dying?  37 

theoretical ;  the  feeling  side,  the  emotional ;  and  the  cult, 
or  the  ceremonial  side. 

The  ceremonial  side  includes  altars,  temples,  priesthoods, 
rituals,  Bibles,  hymns,  prayers,  all  the  external  manifesta- 
tion of  the  religious  life. 

Now,  all  of  these  three  parts  exist  in  and  make  up  every 
religion  that  the  world  ever  saw.  If  you  should  go  down 
and  examine  the  worship  of  him  who  stands  in  fear  and 
trembling  before  some  fetish,  you  would  find  that  he 
had  his  thought  about  his  fetish,  about  the  world,  his 
theory  of  his  own  nature,  his  idea  as  to  the  relation  in 
which  he  stood  to  this  mysterious  and  unseen  power.  And 
you  would  find  that  all  these  three  elements, —  the  thought 
side,  the  feeling  side,  the  cult  or  theoretical  side,  exist  down 
there. 

If  I  should  take  you  to  Rome  and  ask  you  to  examine 
with  me  all  the  magnificent  display  of  the  Romish  ritual 
service,  and  you  should  look  a  little  beneath  the  surface, 
you  would  find  there  the  theoretical  side,  the  feeling  side, 
and  the  ceremonial  side. 

Come  home  and  examine  ours,  our  simpler,  Puritan  form 
of  worship :  we  have  our  theology,  our  theory  of  the  uni- 
verse, and  of  God ;  we  have  our  feeling,  the  emotional  side, 
corresponding  to  our  theoretical  side  ;  and  then  we  have  our 
ritual  side,  simple  as  it  may  be.  Our  cult  is  plain, —  not 
gorgeous,  not  beautiful,  not  extended ;  but  go  through  our 
service  and  you  will  find  it,  the  same  as  all  other  religions, 
made  up  of  these  three  parts. 

What  are  the  people  after  ?  Why  do  they  have  any  reli- 
gion at  all  ?  What  is  the  essence  of  religion  .?  What  is  the 
purpose,  the  meaning,  the  endeavor  of  it  all  ? 

Note,  friends,  from  the  very  beginning  of  the  world  until 


38  Religion  for  To-day 

now  it  has  been  an  endeavor  on  the  part  of  men  to  find  and 
get  into  better  relations  with  the  Unseen  Power,  with  God. 
It  has  been  an  endeavor, —  and  here  comes  in  my  text, —  it 
has  been  an  endeavor,  as  Paul  said,  to  be  "  reconciled  to 
God."  People  have  been  conscious  of  evil,  of  wrong,  of 
suffering,  in  the  world ;  and  they  have  felt,  and  rightly 
felt,  that  these  did  not  belong  to  an  ideal  condition  of 
things.  They  had  their  interpretation  of  these,  their 
explanation  as  to  how  they  came  about.  Generally  they 
believed  that  God  was  angry  with  them  and  that  these  were 
punishments  inflicted.  So  they  have  been  trying  to  find  out 
what  God  wanted  them  to  do,  and  to  do  it. 

Every  religion,  then,  that  ever  existed  has  been  an  effort 
on  the  part  of  man  to  get  into  better  relations  with  God. 
People  have  felt  that  they  stood  vitally  connected  in  some 
way  with  this  infinite,  eternal  Power.  They  have  been  con- 
scious of  the  fact,  which  we  recognize  to-day  more  clearly 
than  it  was  possible  to  recognize  it  in  the  past,  that  life, 
welfare,  happiness, —  all  depend  upon  our  knowing  some- 
thing about  the  laws  of  this  infinite  Power,  and  obeying 
those  laws. 

The  degree  of  our  physical  health  depends  upon  our  knowl- 
edge of  these  laws,  as  embodied  in  our  physical  structure, 
and  our  obedience  to  them.  Mental  health,  true  moral  and 
spiritual  health  and  prosperity,  all  depend  in  their  spheres 
upon  precisely  this  same  thing, —  a  knowledge  of  the  laws 
of  God  and  obedience  to  those  laws. 

This,  then,  has  been  what  humanity  has  been  seeking  in 
all  ages.  They  have  felt  that  they  were  not  in  the  ideal  re- 
lations that  ought  to  exist  towards  God,  and  the  one  thing 
that  they  have  been  after  in  all  their  religions  has  been  to 
create   these   ideal   relations.     In   other  words,    they  have 


Is  Religion  Dying?  39 

had  their  thought  about  God  and  their  thought  about  them- 
selves, and  then  they  have  tried  to  get  into  better  relations 
with  God.  "  Be  reconciled  to  God  !  "  is  the  cry  of  every  relig- 
ion that  ever  existed. 

And,  friends,  if  anybody  supposes  that  the  modern  world 
is  going  to  outgrow  religion,  and  so  outgrow  this  necessity, 
I  would  only  ask  him  to  notice  that  "be  reconciled  to  God," 
stated  in  other  terms,  is  the  last  and  highest  word  of  sci- 
ence just  as  well  as  it  is  of  religion.  Herbert  Spencer  does 
not  use  the  phrase  of  Paul  in  talking  about  being  recon- 
ciled to  God,  but  he  does  use  "adjustment  to  our  envi- 
ronment," and  tells  you  if  you  wish  to  be  well,  or  wish  hap- 
piness or  prosperity  of  any  kind,  you  must  become  adjusted 
to  your  environment.  And  to  the  theist,  who  believes  that 
God  is  our  environment,  that  it  is  his  power,  his  life,  his  law 
everywhere  throughout  the  universe,  being  "reconciled  to 
God  "  and  being  "  adjusted  to  your  environment "  are  only 
two  ways  of  saying  the  same  thing. 

Suppose  for  a  moment  that  you  are  an  agnostic,  and  you 
think  you  are  going  to  escape  religion  by  wearing  that  name. 
Do  you  escape  it  ?  Think  a  moment.  You  say,  "  I  do  not 
know  anything  about  the  nature  of  the  infinite  Power  mani- 
fested in  this  universe."  Granted.  This  Power  is  here. 
As  Herbert  Spencer  says.  The  existence  of  this  infinite 
and  eternal  Power  is  the  one  item  of  knowledge  of  which 
we  are  more  certain  than  of  any  other.  This  Power  is  here. 
It  was  here  before  you  were  born ;  it  will  be  here  after  you 
have  died.  Meantime,  as  you  are  passing  through  this 
world,  your  health,  your  welfare,  your  prosperity,  depend  on 
knowing  something  about  the  laws  of  this  Power  and  obey- 
ing them.  You  do  not  escape  this  relation  which  is  the 
essence,  the  very  soul,  of  the  religious  life. 


40  Religion  for  To-day 

Suppose  you  say,  "  I  am  an  atheist,"  —  go  farther  than  the 
agnostic.  What  of  it  ?  Do  you  escape  this  relation  any 
the  more  ?  Whether  you  say  that  this  Power  is  God,  or 
Spirit,  or  Nature,  or  Force,  or  It,  it  makes  no  difference ; 
the  Power  is  here  and  you  are  the  child  of  that  Power. 

If  you  say  there  is  nothing  in  all  the  wide  range  of  the 
universe  but  dirt,  then  you  are  the  child  of  dirt.  You  are 
the  product  of  this  universe ;  not  only  your  body,  but  your 
brain,  your  thought,  your  conscience,  your  hopes,  your  fears, 
your  loves. 

Whatever  theory  you  hold  about  the  universe  you  are  the 
child  of  it.  It  was  here  before  you,  it  will  be  here  after 
you  disappear ;  and  meantime,  as  I  said  before,  all  your 
life,  your  welfare,  your  happiness,  depend  upon  so  much  of 
the  knowledge  of  the  laws  of  this  universe  as  you  possess 
and  the  degree  of  your  obedience  to  those  laws. 

So,  no  matter  what  your  theory,  friends,  you  must  deal 
with  religion  whether  you  will  or  no.  You  can  no  more 
escape  it  than  an  eagle  can  outfly  the  limits  of  the  atmos- 
phere in  which  he  finds  leverage  for  his  wings.  You  can  no 
more  escape  it  than  a  ship  captain  can  outsail  the  horizon 
which  closes  him  round  on  every  sea,  on  every  shore. 

The  essence,  then,  the  soul,  of  religion,  is  the  sense  of 
this  relationship  between  the  individual  soul  and  his  God, 
and  the  one  purpose  and  aim  of  it  is  to  better  this  relation, 
to  get  into  right  relations  with  God.  So  that  religion, 
friends,  though  you  may  find  some  manifestations  of  it 
among  barbaric  people  to  be  crude  and  cruel  and  unclean 
and  low,  religion  in  every  nation  and  in  every  age  has  been 
the  best  endeavor  the  people  of  the  time  could  make  to  find 
—  what?  The  secret  of  life  ^ — which  lies  in  being  rightly  re- 
lated to  this  infinite  and  eternal  Power. 


Is  Religion  Dying?  41 

The  moment,  then,  you  get  a  clear  and  right  definition  of 
religion  in  your  minds,  you  see  beyond  the  possibility  of 
question  that  religion  is  immortal,  it  cannot  possibly  pass 
away. 

But  something  has  been  happening  in  all  these  ages ;  for^ 
as  I  said  at  the  outset,  religions,  hundreds  of  them,  have- 
been  born,  have  grown  to  their  maturity,  have  grown  old, 
have  died  and  faded  out  of  the  life  of  men.  What  is  it  that 
has  been  happening  ?  My  friends,  it  is  the  simplest  thing' 
in  the  world  that  has  been  happening,  and  it  is  the  most 
hopeful  thing  in  the  world  that  has  been  happening:  hu- 
manity,  very  slowly, —  so  slow  that  it  is  discouraging  to 
watch  the  process, —  humanity  has  been  getting  civilized; 
has  been  learning  something ;  has  been  getting  better  ideas, 
clearer  thoughts,  more  nearly  correct  theories  of  the  world 
it  is  living  in.  That  is  the  first  thing  that  has  been  hap- 
pening. 

You  examine  any  one  of  the  crude  cosmologies  of  some 
barbaric  people,  and  you  smile  over  them  to-day.  You  say, 
"  How  ignorant  those  people  were  !  "  But  they  did  the  very 
best  they  knew  at  the  time.  They  had  their  theory  as  to 
how  the  world  was  made,  and  why  it  was  made,  and  who 
made  it  and  what  it  was  for ;  and  that  has  become  the  creed 
side  always  of  their  religion.  But,  as  the  world  has  gone 
on,  as  man  has  developed  in  intellectual  power,  been  able 
to  think  more  broadly,  accurately,  as  he  has  investigated  and 
studied  more  widely,  of  course  he  has  outgrown  his  childish 
conception  of  the  universe,  of  how  and  when  God  made  it, 
and  what  for,  and  has  attained  to  ideas  which  are  more 
nearly  commensurate  with  the  facts. 

I  would  not  for  a  moment  assume  that  we  to-day  are 
through !     The  curse  of  all  the  theorizers   of  the  past  has 


42  Religion  for  To-day 

been  just  this  assumption  that  they  were  through.  As  though 
anybody  ever  could  get  through,  in  an  infinite  universe !  It 
has  been  the  pettiest,  the  most  conceited,  most  fallacious 
assumption  that  the  world  has  ever  known.  But  it  has  been 
made,  as  I  shall  have  occasion  to  show  a  little  later. 

That  which  has  been  going  on,  then,  has  been  a  readjust- 
ment of  men's  thinking  to  bring  it  into  accord  with  the  facts 
of  God. 

Let  me  interject  right  there,  friends,  I  wish  you  would 
remember  all  the  time  that  these  facts  are  God's ;  for,  if 
we  discover  a  fact,  it  is  a  divine  fact.  I  hear  people  talking 
sometimes  as  though  they  thought  scientific  men  were  dis- 
covering these  facts  in  order  to  perplex  and  disturb  people. 

When  Galileo  discovered  the  moons  of  Jupiter  he  upset 
all  the  theories  of  his  time.  He  was  not  responsible  for 
their  being  there ;  he  simply  happened  to  see  them.  So, 
when  scientific  men  discover  some  new  magnificent  fact  that 
compels  a  reconstruction  of  the  theories  that  men  have  been 
holding,  are  they  to  blame?  Who  is  to  blame?  If  any- 
body is  to  blame  is  it  not  He  who  made  it  ?  Is  it  not  well 
for  us  reverently  to  stop  and  consider  that  all  facts  are 
God's  facts,  and  that  when  we  presumptuously  choose  to 
deny  or  turn  our  backs  on  facts,  we  are  turning  our  backs 
on  God  and  his  revelation  ? 

If  humanity,  then,  is  to  grow  any,  of  course  the  partial, 
crude,  the  ignorant  theories  of  the  universe  have  to  be  out- 
grown. Just  as  when  a  child  grows  from  being  a  child  up 
to  a  man,  he  outgrows  the  little  childhood  world  in  which 
he  lived,  and  enters  his  man's  world  or  woman's  world, — 
finer,  grander  in  every  conceivable  way. 

Not  only,  then,  does  the  creed  change,  the  creed  must 
change  if  we  grow  wiser. 


Is  Religion  Dying?  43 

And  right  in  here,  friends,  is  the  reason  and  the  only 
reason  why  we  Unitarians  hold  the  position  we  do  in  re- 
gard to  creeds,  and  which  is  sometimes  thrown  up  to  us 
by  the  question,  ''Why  do  you  have  no  fixed  creed?"  Be- 
cause a  man  who  is  climbing  a  mountain  cannot  have  a 
fixed  and  final  statement  of  what  he  sees.  He  may  make 
one  to-day ;  but,  if  he  climbs  another  mile,  he  gets  another 
view  of  things  and  has  to  reconstruct  it.  I  am  perfectly 
willing  to  make  you  a  creed  of  any  length  if  you  will  only 
give  me  time,  stating  what  I  believe  to-day.  But  I  will  not 
promise  not  to  learn  something  between  to-day  and  to- 
morrow ;  and  if  I  do,  and  it  is  true,  I  shall  have  to  change 
my  creed.  And  I  would  rather  change  my  creed  by  taking 
from  it  something  which  I  find  is  not  true  than  keep  it  when 
I  know  it  is  not.  The  only  alternative  to  this  is  to  stop 
learning  or  else  lie  about  it  and  play  the  hypocrite. 

This  is  what  it  means  on  the  intellectual  side. 

Now  what  does  it  mean  on  the  cult  side,  the  ceremonial 
side  ?  And  here  let  us  note  one  fact  that  is  instructive. 
There  have  been  periods  in  the  past,  and  we  have  not  out- 
grown them  yet,  except  in  certain  parts  of  the  world,  when 
the  creed  or  the  cult,  either  the  one  or  the  other,  vv^as  re- 
garded as  more  important  than  anything  else.  You  go 
back  to  ancient  Rome,  for  example,  and  witness  some  re- 
ligious ceremony,  and  you  will  find  out  it  has  never  entered 
into  the  heads  of  the  people  that  the  gods  cared  anything 
about  a  man's  character  or  conduct.  A  man  by  being  re- 
ligious does  not  profess  even  to  tell  the  truth,  or  to  be  kind 
and  faithful  in  his  family,  or  to  be  honest  with  his  neigh- 
bors. The  gods  cared  nothing  about  that.  The  gods  were 
not  very  good  people  themselves.  All  that  they  wanted  was 
that  the  sacrifice  should  be  brought  and  the  rituals  be  gone 


44  Religion  for  To-day 

through  with  the  right  external  ceremony.  Scrupulously  at- 
tended to  in  this  respect,  they  asked  no  questions  about 
character  and  conduct,  they  cared  nothing  about  your  be- 
lief; you  could  believe  whatever  you  liked,  so  long  as  the 
sacrifices  were  brought. 

Then  you  find  other  religions  where  the  creed  side  is 
everything.  If  you  believe,  no  careful  inquisition  is  made 
as  to  your  conduct ;  you  can  live  about  as  you  please  if  you 
are  not  disobedient  to  your  creed ;  the  cult  is  not  so  im- 
portant, the  ritual,  the  ceremonial.  The  one  chief  thing 
dwelt  on  is  the  belief,  soundness  of  doctrine. 

But,  friends,  these  are  changing,  as  I  said.  As  the  world 
gets  more  civilized  we  are  getting  finer,  broader,  truer  ideas 
about  the  universe,  about  God,  about  human  nature,  about 
our  relation  to  God.  And  the  cult,  the  ceremony,  what  are 
these,  what  are  they  coming  to  ?  There  is  no  reason  why 
Vv-e  as  Unitarians  should  not  have  all  the  stately  ritual  of  the 
most  elaborately  conducted  service  on  the  face  of  the  earth, 
if  we  want  it.  The  only  important  thing  is  that  the  cere- 
mony shall  be  living,  that  it  shall  adequately  express  the 
thought  and  feeling.  But  as  the  thought  and  the  feeling 
change,  of  course  the  ceremony  changes,  if  people  are 
careful  about  these  things  and  do  not  keep  on  going 
through  what  become  mere  mummeries  because  the  life  has 
gone  out  of  them. 

These  are  the  processes,  friends,  that  have  been  going 
on, —  perfectly  simple,  perfectly  natural ;  inevitable,  if 
humanity  is  to  grow  any. 

But  let  us  now  raise  the  question  most  important  of  all. 
In  the  midst  of  this  process  is  that  which  is  most  vital  to 
religion  decaying  any }  Is  there  any  period  in  the  history 
of  the  past  when  people  cared  more  for  truth  than  they  do 


Is  Religion  Dying?  45 

to-day  ?  Is  there  any  period  in  the  history  of  the  past  when 
there  was  more  widely  spread  in  the  hearts  of  the  people  a 
sense  of  justice  and  a  demand  for  it?  Was  there  ever  a 
time  when  there  was  a  broader  spirit  of  charity,  of  humanity, 
when  people  cared  more  for  the  condition  of  the  inhabitants 
of  other  lands  ?  for  righteousness  between  nation  and 
nation  ?  when  they  cared  more  for  the  slave,  for  the  down- 
trodden, for  those  who  were  suffering  any  form  of  evil  ? 

Matthew  Arnold  has  said  somewhere  that  *'  conduct  is  at 
least  three-fourths  of  life."  Was  there  ever  a  time  in  the 
history  of  the  world  when  there  was  a  higher  standard  of 
conduct,  when  people  cared  more  for  personal  righteous- 
ness ?  Have  we  lost  any  of  the  reverences,  any  of  the 
tendernesses,  any  of  the  sentiments  out  of  religion  ? 

You  misread  the  past,  friends,  if  you  think  so  for  one 
passing  moment. 

Emerson  has  concentrated  the  beautiful  truth  into  two 
lines  as  clear  as  crystal  when  he  says, — 

"  One  accent  of  the  Holy  Ghost 
The  heedless  world  hath  never  lost." 

There  never  was  a  time  when  men  cared  so  much  for 
these  things  which  are  the  essence  and  the  soul  of  religion, 
these  things  that  sweeten  the  world  and  make  human  life 
divine.  It  shows  only  a  superficial  thought,  it  shows  an 
ignorant  misreading  of  facts,  when  anybody  supposes  that 
there  ever  was  a  time  in  the  history  of  the  world  which  was 
more  religious  than  to-day. 

Take  up  any  phase  you  please  of  human  life  and  I  will 
prove  to  you,  beyond  the  possibility  of  question,  that  the 
world  is  unspeakably  better  to-day  than  it  ever  was  before. 
Does  this  mean  the  decay  of  religion.?     Religion  has  over- 

OF  THK 

UNIVERSITY 
CALIFO^ 


46  Religion  for  To-day 

run  the  churches,  it  has  got  beyond  the  limits  of  the  creeds, 
it  is  outside  of  all  ceremonial  forms ;  religion  is  taking 
possession  of  the  sense  of  justice  between  man  and  man. 

Why,  friends,  go  back  five  hundred  years  ago.  Did  other 
nations  then  presume  to  raise  a  question  as  to  whether  any 
particular  nation  had  a  right  to  engage  in  any  particular 
war  1  They  would  have  been  laughed  at  for  the  thought ! 
But  to-day  not  a  civilized  nation  on  the  face  of  the  earth 
dares  to  go  to  war  in  defiance  of  the  moral  sentiment  of 
other  civilized  peoples.  They  have  got  to  claim,  and  try 
to  make  out  their  case,  that  it  is  a  matter  of  justice  and 
right,  something  that  has  to  be  done.  And  so  in  any  de- 
partment of  human  life  that  you  choose  to  investigate  you 
will  find  a  similar  thing  to  be  true. 

Religion  is  more  than  creed,  it  is  more  than  ceremony; 
it  is  coming  to  be  life,  righteousness,  truth,  justice,  love, 
human  helpfulness,  service;  all  these  things  that  brighten 
and  glorify  this  struggling  and  rising  humanity  of  ours. 

Now  one  point  more  I  must  ask  your  attention  to  before 
we  are  done. 

Every  little  while  along  the  line  of  this  progress  that  I 
have  been  speaking  of,  as  natural  and  inevitable,  you  find 
the  remains  of  old-time  tragedies, —  the  prophets  persecuted, 
saviours  slain,  reformers  burned.  Why  is  it  ?  As  Jesus 
said  to  the  people  of  his  time :  You  admit  that  the  fathers 
were  wrong ;  the  fathers  burned  the  prophets,  and  you  build 
their  sepulchres.  That  is  what  the  world  has  been  doing 
from  the  beginning.  Oh,  the  pity  of  it !  Out  of  what  sort 
of  curious,  cruel  misconception  of  things  does  it  spring .? 

Go  back  and  trace  the  men  who  have  been  martyrs  to  a 
new  truth,  from  the  far-off  prophets  in  the  dim  ages  of  the 
past  down  to  men  like  William   Lloyd  Garrison,  dragged  by 


Is  Religio?i  Dymg?  47 

a  mob  of  the  best  citizens  through  the  streets  of  our  modern 
Athens.  What  did  it  mean  when  in  ancient  Athens,  Anax- 
agoras,  one  of  the  finest  figures  of  his  age,  is  condemned  to 
death  because  he  declared  that  the  sun  was  a  burning  ball 
of  fire  ?  His  sentence  is  commuted  at  the  request  of  Peri- 
cles to  banishment  for  life.  What  is  it  for.?  He  had  in- 
sulted their  religion  ;  because  their  religion  had  been  saying 
all  the  time  that  the  sun  was  Apollo,  the  sun-god,  driving  a 
chariot  across  the  pathway  of  the  heavens ;  and  it  was 
impious  and  atheistic  to  say  it  was  a  ball  of  fire. 

But  you  will  find  at  every  single  stage  of  the  world's  ad- 
vance somebody  has  discovered  a  new,  deeper,  higher  truth, 
and  he  is  crucified  for  it.  Why?  Because,  just  as  I  said 
in  an  earlier  part  of  my  discourse,  every  religion  that 
ever  existed  has  started  the  absolutely  baseless,  unwar- 
rantable assumption  that  it  was  infallible ;  that  it  had  all 
the  truth  that  God  was  ever  going  to  give  the  world ;  and 
that,  therefore,  if  you  dared  to  find  out  a  new  truth  you 
were  insulting  God  and  injuring  humanity.  I  say  there  has 
not  been  a  religion,  from  the  miserable,  ignorant  fetish  wor- 
ships at  the  beginning  clear  up  to  the  great  churches  of 
to-day,  that  has  not  made,  and  does  not  still  make,  this  un- 
warrantable claim.  And  I  say  again  —  and  I  defy  contra- 
diction on  the  part  of  the  scholarship  of  the  world  —  that 
there  is  absolutely  no  authority  in  heaven  or  earth  for  doing 
anything  of  the  sort.  There  is  no  authority  for  it  in  this 
Bible ;  there  is  no  authority  that  will  bear  the  light  in  the 
history  of  any  church ;  it  is  simply  a  pure,  unwarrantable 
assumption. 

"I,"  —  and  the  gigantic  conceit  of  it!  —  "I  am  the  de- 
positary of  God's  eternal  truth,  and  all  there  is  of  it  that  he 
is  ever  going  to  give  the  world  ;  if  you  v.'ant  a  little  fragment 


48  Religion  for  To-day 

o\  it  come  to  me.  If  you  dare  to  doubt,  then  the  curse, 
clear  to  the  eternal  hell,  shall  be  upon  you.  If  you  dare 
to  find  out  something  that  does  not  agree  with  this  truth, 
why,  then,  so  much  the  worse  for  your  new  discovery." 

The  Church  has  put  itself  on  record  almost  from  the 
beginning, —  I  refer  now  to  the  organized  "  authorities " 
that  have  claimed  to  represent  the  Church  and  speak  for  it, 
—  as  opposed  to  almost  every  new  discovery  for  the  last 
two  thousand  years ;  and  every  single  time  they  have  been 
wrong.  I  should  think  they  would  get  tired  of  it  after  a 
while.  They  assume  that  they  are  infallible  ;  that  they  have 
all  God's  truth.  And  there  is  no  bitter  hatred  quite  like 
that  of  the  man  who  thinks  he  speaks  for  God  and  whose 
infallibility  is  questioned. 

And  so  you  will  find  that  the  men  who  have  discovered 
some  new  truth  have  inevitably  and  always  been  persecuted 
and  cast  out,  until  by  and  by  the  world  has  found  itself  com- 
pelled to  accept  it  and  has  gathered  itself  up  again  and  gone 
forward  as  best  it  could. 

The  time  will  come,  I  hope,  when  people  will  learn  that 
this  is  an  infinite  universe,  and  that  any  theories  which 
they  can  frame  are  only  partial,  and  that  a  new  truth 
that  is  vouchsafed  to  men  is  as  sacred  as  any  old  truth. 
There  is  no  new  truth  except  as  related  to  our  discovery.  I 
find  out  something  new  to-day  which  I  did  not  know  yester- 
day. It  has  been  true  from  the  beginning,  as  true  as  it  is 
now,  only  I  have  not  found  it  out,  that  is  all.  There  is 
no  new  truth,  there  is  no  old  truth,  except  as  related  to  the 
period  of  our  discovery. 

The  time  will  come,  I  hope,  when  the  world  will  learn 
this ;  and  then,  instead  of  these  cataclysms,  upheavals,  per- 
secutions, there  will  be  a  recognized  and  assented-to  grad- 


Is  Religion  Dying  f  49 

ual  advance,  the  world  growing  wiser,  sweeter,  and  better 
day  by  day.  Then  the  man  who  has  discovered  a  new 
truth  will  not  be  branded  as  an  infidel. 

The  only  infidel  in  the  world  is  the  man  who  is  faithless  to 
God's  truth.  A  man  who  has  discovered  a  new  truth  which 
does  nat  agree  with  beliefs,  ideas,  that  have  been  established 
in  the  past  is  not  an  infidel.  It  is  the  man  who  refuses  to 
accept  the  new  truth  that  is  the  infidel ;  for  he  is  false  to 
God's  last  spoken  word. 

The  time  will  come,  then,  when  the  world  will  evenly  and 
broadly  advance  step  by  step,  when  the  day  of  God  will 
come  as  comes  one  of  our  natural  days, —  first  a  streak  of 
light  in  the  east,  expanding,  flooding  the  heavens,  catch- 
ing with  glory  the  tops  of  the  highest  mountain,  then  run- 
ning down  their  sides  over  the  plains,  until  the  gorges  and 
the  deepest  valleys  of  the  earth  are  full  of  light. 


WHAT    IS    CHRISTIANITY? 


It  happens  somewhat  curiously  —  though  of  course  in 
laying  out  the  present  series  of  sermons  it  was  as  far  as 
possible  from  my  mind  —  that  my  theme  chimes  in  with 
a  great  controversy  which  is  at  present  disturbing  the 
churches  and  the  newspapers  of  this  city  and  Brooklyn. 

The  Rev.  Lyman  Abbott,  D.D.,  minister  of  Plymouth 
Church,  in  Brooklyn,  has  been  giving  some  sermons  in 
which  he  has  been  dealing  with  questions  of  Revelation, 
The  Bible,  The  Higher  Criticism.  He  has  raised  a  storm 
of  protest  on  the  part  of  many  of  his  brother  ministers  and 
on  the  part  of  some  of  the  newspapers  of  the  time.  The 
Sun^  for  example,  had,  the  other  morning,  a  long,  clear, 
strong  editorial  discussing  the  problem  as  to  whether  Mr. 
Abbott  himself  was  a  Christian  ;  and  it  decided  that  instead 
of  being  a  Christian  he  is  an  infidel. 

From  the  old  point  of  view,  from  the  hard  and  fast  ortho- 
doxy of  the  creeds,  the  judgment  is  an  accurate  one.  If  it 
be  necessary  to  believe  in  the  infallibility  of  the  Bible,  the 
infallibility  of  the  old  creeds  —  the  Westminster  Confession 
and  others  —  in  order  to  be  a  Christian,  then  Dr.  Abbott  is 
an  infidel.  The  decision  of  the  Sun  is  perfectly  logical  if 
you  grant  the  premises. 

Others  are  rejoicing  in  the  work  which  Dr.  Abbott  is 
doing,  and  are  taking  the  ground  that  it  is  not  at  all  neces- 
sary to  believe  these  things  in  order  to  be  a  Christian. 


What  is  Christianity  f  51 

I  say  then,  that,  curiously  enough,  my  theme  this  morn- 
ing falls  into  the  midst  of  this  disputatious  time.  And 
to-day,  in  a  good  many  other  pulpits  of  Brooklyn  and  New 
York,  substantially  this  theme  will  be  discussed. 

It  ought,  then,  to  be  not  only  of  interest,  but  of  a  good 
deal  of  practical  importance,  for  us  to  settle,  if  we  can,  what 
are  the  essential  things  in  Christianity. 

If  one  were  to  judge  by  the  claims  of  ministers,  of 
ecclesiastical  associations,  denominational  newspapers  and 
reviews,  if  one  were  to  judge  from  the  creeds,  he  would 
suppose  that  Christianity  came  suddenly  and  full-grown  into 
the  world,  that  it  leaped  from  the  thought  of  God  as 
Minerva  was  fabled  to  have  leaped,  fully  developed  and  in 
complete  armor,  from  the  forehead  of  Jupiter. 

You  would  suppose  that,  in  the  time  of  Jesus  and  his 
Apostles,  the  creed,  the  ceremony,  the  practice,  the  entire 
Christian  system,  was  developed.  You  would  suppose  that 
it  had  been  recognized  that  the  world  was  in  a  special  con- 
dition of  loss,  and  that  this  plan  of  salvation,  definitely  and 
fully  outlined,  was  suddenly  revealed  to  men.  And  yet  we 
are  face  to  face  with  a  curious  fact  if  that  be  true. 

The  Church  of  Rome  claims  to  be  the  only  and  original 
Church,  and  regards  the  Greek  Church  and  all  Protestants 
as  so  absolutely  astray  as  to  have  no  right  to  the  name  of 
Christian.  The  Greek  Church  regards  the  Church  of  Rome 
and  all  Protestants  as  in  a  similar  hopeless  condition. 
While  all  the  Protestant  churches  regard  the  Church  of 
Rome  and  the  Greek  Church  as  departures  from  the  primi- 
tive simplicity  of  Christianity  and  as  being  mixed  up  with, 
and  overloaded  by,  forms  and  ceremonies  and  doctrines 
which  have  been  borrowed  from  pagan  sources. 

If  there  was  a  clear,  a  consistent,  a  definite  revelation  of 


52  Religion  for  To-day 

those  things  that  are  essential  to  Christianity  at  the  very 
outset,  is  not  this  confusion  and  contradiction  a  little 
strange  and  hard  to  understand  ? 

Let  us  inquire,  then,  this  morning  for  a  little  as  to  what 
are  the  facts,  the  historic  facts,  the  facts  which  are  not 
questioned  by  anybody  who  is  simply  looking  to  find  what 
is  true. 

We  shall  discover,  then,  that  Christianity  is  in  line  with 
evolution,  is  an  illustration  of  evolution.  Instead  of  its 
coming  into  the  world  fully  developed,  full-grown,  we  shall 
recognize  the  fact  that  a  seed  was  planted  and  that  it  grew 
year  after  year,  century  after  century,  gathering  material  on 
every  hand  from  pagan  and  Christian  sources,  and  that, 
instead  of  its  having  reached  a  fixed  and  final  form  during 
the  first  century  or  the  fifth  or  the  tenth  or  the  eighteenth, 
it  has  never  reached  a  fixed  and  final  form,  never  will  reach 
it,  never  can  reach  it,  in  the  nature  of  things.  For  every- 
thing in  this  universe  is  undergoing  either  one  of  two 
processes :  it  is  growing  or  it  is  decaying ;  and  in  either 
case  it  is  not  standing  still,  it  is  changing. 

In  spite,  however,  of  these  obvious  facts  and  principles, 
you  will  find  the  most  extravagant  claims  made  in  certain 
directions. 

For  example,  the  Roman  Catholic  Church  says  that  it 
believes  that  which  has  always  been  believed  by  all  men 
everywhere.  So  it  claims  to  be  catholic,  or  general,  or 
universal  in  its  belief.  All  Protestants  make  a  similar 
claim,  so  far  as  the  completeness  and  finality  of  revelation 
are  concerned.  The  Rev.  Dr.  Richard  S.  Storrs,  the  famous 
Congregationalist  preacher  of  Brooklyn,  is  reported  to  have 
said  not  many  years  ago  that  the  idea  of  progress  in 
theology  was  absurd, —  meaning,  of    course,  that  since,   as 


What  is  Christianity  ?  53 

he  believes,  it  had  been  completely  and  finally  revealed  once 
for  all,  there  could  be  no  growth  or  change  in  it. 

But  let  us  now  look  for  a  little,  glancing  along  the  line 
of  historic  advance  and  see  what  we  really  discover ;  and 
then  at  the  end  we  will  try  to  see,  if  we  may,  what  are  the 
essential  things  in  Christianity. 

And  first,  I  wish  you  to  note  the  growth  of  belief  concern- 
ing the  nature  and  the  authority  of  Jesus  himself. 

"  The  disciples  were  called  Christians  first  in  Antioch." 
This,  of  course,  was  a  good  many  years  after  the  death  of 
Jesus.  It  was  applied  to  them,  undoubtedly,  as  a  nickname, 
a  name  of  opprobrium,  contempt.  A  great  many  of  the 
grandest  names  of  the  world  have  been  gained  in  a  similar 
way,  so  that  we  need  not  be  ashamed  of  it  on  that  account. 
But  what  did  it  mean  ?  What  was  a  Christian,  for  example, 
in  the  time  of  Paul  ? 

And  here  let  me  suggest  to  you,  if  you  wish  to  read  the 
New  Testament  in  its  order,  so  as  to  get  the  growth  of 
thought,  read  Paul's  epistles  first,  beginning  with  Galatians. 
For  these  were  the  first  parts  of  the  New  Testament  and 
were  written  years  and  years  before  either  of  the  Gospels 
came  into  its  present  shape. 

Now  what  was  a  Christian  during  the  time  that  Paul  was 
writing  these  epistles?  Only  one  single  thing  was  neces- 
sary to  convert  a  Jew  into  a  Christian.  The  Jew  believed 
that  a  Messiah  was  to  come ;  the  Christian  believed  that 
the  Messiah  the  Jews  had  been  looking  for  had  come  and 
that  Jesus  was  he. 

That  is  all  that  constituted  a  Christian  during  the  first 
century,  and  you  will  find  that  it  is  the  burden  of  Paul's 
preaching.  He  went  up  and  down  the  world  proclaiming  — 
what?     Even  if  you  have  a   superficial  knowledge  of  the 


54  Religio7i  for  To-day 

writings  of  the  New  Testament  you  will  recognize  the  echo 
of  this  verse.  The  one  thing  that  Paul  drove  home  by- 
argument  and  appeal  to  the  understanding,  the  consciences, 
the  hearts,  of  his  hearers  was  that  "this  Jesus"  who  had 
been  crucified  ''was  the  Christ," — and  "Christ,"  you  know, 
is  only  the  Greek  Christos,  the  Greek  translation  of  the 
Hebrew  word  Messiah. 

Paul  preached,  then,  that  Jesus  was  the  Messiah ;  and 
accepting  this  was  what  constituted  a  Christian.  But  the 
process  of  development  in  regard  to  the  Christian  thought 
about  Jesus  had  only  then  begun. 

And  let  me  ask  you  to  remember,  if  you  think  it  strange 
that  such  a  process  should  have  gone  on, —  remember  that 
Christianity  was  born  in  the  midst  of  a  time  and  conditions 
when  it  was  the  commonest  thing  in  the  world  to  deify  men. 
Greek  and  Roman  hero  after  hero  had  been  deified  by  the 
popular  imagination  and  lifted  up  into  the  heavens.  There 
was  no  god  in  all  the  Roman  Empire  so  widely  worshipped 
during  the  reign  of  Augustus,  and  for  a  hundred  or  two 
years  after  his  time,  as  was  the  Emperor  Augustus  himself. 
His  image,  his  shrine,  lined  all  the  roads  and  highways  and 
was  found  in  the  peasants'  cottages  throughout  the  Roman 
Empire. 

So  that  it  was  not  a  strange  thing  among  the  Greeks  and 
among  the  Romans  that  this  process  of  deifying  should  take 
place.  It  was,  or  would  have  been,  a  very  strange  thing 
among  the  Jews.  They  held  such  a  spiritual  conception  of 
God,  and  regarded  him  as  withdrawn  by  nature  and  dis- 
tance so  far  from  his  world  that  it  would  have  seemed  to 
them  nothing  short  of  outright  blasphemy  to  compare  with 
him  any  creature  born  of  woman.  So  that  this  doctrine 
never  could  have  sprung  up  among  the  Jews.     And  as  you 


What  is  Christianity  ?  55 

know,  it  never  found  any  lodgment  among  the  Jews ;  the 
Jews  never  became  Christians. 

It  grew  up  among  the  Greeks  and  the  Romans,  where,  as 
I  have  said  to  you,  this  process  was  one  of  the  common- 
places of  the  time.  But  it  was  not  in  the  first  century. 
First  was  the  thought  that  he  was  the  Messiah.  The  next 
step  was  the  belief  that  he  was  the  second  Adam.  You  will 
find  Paul  teaching  this.  The  first  Adam  was  the  head  of 
this  fallen  humanity  of  ours.  Christ,  Paul  believed,  was 
divinely  appointed  to  be  the  head  of  a  new  and  spiritual 
order  of  humanity  that  was  to  supersede  the  old  and  carnal 
order  of  the  past. 

Then,  after  that,  came  another  step.  Jesus  came  to  be 
regarded  as  a  pre-existent  being,  the  Lord  or  Master  from 
heaven,  the  first-born  of  every  creature, —  but,  remember, 
creature  still,  infinitely  removed  from  the  divine  source  of  all. 

Then  at  last  the  final  step  was  taken,  and  Jesus  was  ele- 
vated to  the  position  of  sharing  with  the  Father  his  own 
divine  nature.  But  how  long  did  it  take  for  this  process 
to  culminate? 

As  you  look  back  down  the  ages,  facts  and  movements  get 
massed  together  in  such  a  way  that  you  do  not  notice  how 
far  they  are  apart.  Just  as,  for  example,  if  you  are  stand- 
ing looking  along  lengthwise  of  a  row  of  trees,  those  trees 
might  be  half  a  mile  apart,  but  they  would  look  to  you  as 
if  they  were  close  together ;  so,  as  you  look  down  the  ages 
towards  the  beginning  of  things,  events  seem  to  crowd  each 
other,  though  there  were  centuries  between. 

So,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  it  was  more  than  three  hundred 
years  before  the  belief  in  the  deity  of  Jesus  became  a  test 
of  orthodoxy. 

If   it  became  necessary  then  to  believe   in  the  deity  of 


56  Religion  for  To-day 

Jesus  in  order  to  be  a  Christian,  in  order  to  be  saved,  then 
there  were  no  Christians  in  the  world  for  three  hundred 
years,  and  none  of  the  church  members  of  all  that  time  had 
any  chance  of  being  saved.  For  the  doctrine  of  the  deity 
of  Jesus  was  not  promulgated  as  an  orthodox  doctrine  until 
the  year  325  at  the  Council  of  Nice,  at  the  time  that  the 
Nicene  Creed  was  formed. 

And  how  was  the  decision  reached  at  that  time.?  We 
ought  to  know  some  of  these  primary  facts.  Was  it  reached 
because  the  people  had  any  new  evidence  on  the  subject 
that  they  did  not  have  while  Jesus  was  walking  in  the  fields 
of  Galilee  ?  Was  it  reached  because  the  people  were  wiser  ? 
Was  it  built  out  of  evidence  ? 

Nothing  of  the  kind.  It  was  simply  the  result  of  philo- 
sophical speculation ;  it  was  the  attempt  to  bridge  over  an 
imaginary  gulf  supposed  to  exist  between  God  and  his 
world.  And  the  bishops  fought  over  it  not  in  a  very  Chris- 
tian temper.  There  never  was  a  bitterer  factional  fight  in 
Tammany  Hall  than  that  which  finally  decided  the  doc- 
trines of  the  Nicene  Creed.  And  they  were  not  decided 
until  the  Emperor  Constantine  threw  in  the  weight  of  his 
imperial  decision  against  Arius  and  in  favor  of  Athanasius. 

And  why  did  he  do  it  ?  Did  Constantine  know  anything 
about  it?  Was  he  an  example  of  Christian  piety?  He 
was  one  of  the  most  treacherous,  murderous  emperors  that 
ever  lived.  He  cared  nothing  for  the  principles  involved 
one  way  or  the  other ;  it  was  simply  a  matter  of  govern- 
mental policy  with  him. 

Thus  the  Nicene  Creed  was  born,  born  after  the  struggle 
of  three  hundred  years  and  more. 

Now  as  to  the  other  two  great  creeds  of  Christendom,  let 
me  say  a  word  or  two  concerning  them. 


W/iat  is  Christianity  f  57 

The  chancellor  of  the  University  of  New  York,  two  or 
three  weeks  ago,  published  in  one  of  our  great  Sunday  news- 
papers the  statement  that  the  Apostles'  Creed  was  written^ 
eighteen  hundred  years  ago.  I  do  not  know  whether  the 
chancellor  was  napping  at  the  time  he  wrote  it.  I  cannot 
think  that  he  was  ignorant.  I  cannot  think  that  he  would 
purposely  take  advantage  of  the  supposed  ignorance  of  his- 
readers.  You  would  suppose,  to  hear  people  talk, —  there 
are  twelve  clauses  in  the  Apostles'  Creed, —  that  the  Apostles- 
stood  up  in  a  row  and  one  of  them  recited  one  clause  and- 
another  another  until  they  finished  the  Creed,  and  that  so  it 
dates  back  to  their  time. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  Apostles'  Creed  was  never  heard 
of  for  five  hundred  years  after  the  birth  of  Jesus.  Nobody 
knows  who  wrote  it  or  whether  there  is  any  authority  con- 
nected with  it  or  not.  We  know  that  the  people  of  that  time 
were  very  ignorant  about  this  world,  and  I  for  one  do  not 
know  why  I  should  suppose  they  knew  everything  about  the 
other.  It  is  a  purely  anonymous  production,  of  absolutely 
no  authority  whatsoever. 

If,  however,  let  me  say,  it  be  necessary  in  order  to  be  a 
Christian  that  one  should  accept  the  Apostles'  Creed,  then 
what  becomes  of  the  people  who  lived  after  the  birth  of 
Christ  for  five  hundred  years  before  there  was  any  Apostles' 
Creed .? 

Now  for  the  other  great  Christian  symbol,  as  it  is  called, 
—  the  Athanasian  Creed.  And  let  me  remind  you  here, 
friends, —  for  it  is  a  matter  of  a  good  deal  of  importance, — 
that  the  doctrine  of  the  Trinity  is  not  fully  developed  in 
either  the  Apostles'  Creed  or  the  Nicene  Creed.  It  does 
not  come  to  its  last  explicit  statement  until  the  promulga- 
tion of  the  Athanasian  Creed. 


58  Religion  for  To-day 

I  do  not  know  why  it  should  be  called  the  Athanasian 
Creed.  Athanasius  lived  in  the  fourth  century  and  was  the 
great  adversary  of  Arius  in  the  struggle  out  of  which 
came  the  Nicene  Creed.  Yet  this  creed  is  named  for  him. 
As  I  say,  I  do  not  know  why  —  unless  it  is  supposed  that  it 
represents  what  Athanasius  would  have  believed  if  he  had 
lived  at  the  time  the  creed  was  formed. 

This  Athanasian  Creed  has  been  dropped  out  of  the 
Prayer  Book  of  the  American  churches,  but  it  is  still  bind- 
ing on  every  Anglican  and  must  be  subscribed  to  by  all 
the  clergy  of  the  Anglican  Church.  It  is  very  long,  meta- 
physical, and  goes  into  a  particular  definition  of  the  Trinity. 
But  when  was  it  promulgated  ? 

Not  until  the  ninth  century.  More  than  eight  hundred 
years  had  gone  by  in  the  history  of  the  church  before  the 
Athanasian  Creed  appeared.  And  this  creed  has  attached 
to  it  what  is  called  the  "  damnatory  clause,"  very  famous  in 
theological  discussion. 

What  is  that  clause  }  It  declares  that  unless  a  man  be- 
lieve every  part  of  this  Athanasian  Creed,  he  shall  no  doubt 
perish  everlastingly. 

Again  let  me  ask,  if  it  be  absolutely  necessary  to  believe 
the  Athanasian  Creed  in  order  to  be  a  Christian ;  if  it  be 
necessary  to  believe  it  in  order  to  be  saved,  what  becomes 
of  not  only  the  world  for  several  hundreds  of  thousands  of 
years,  but  what  becomes  of  the  first  eight  hundred  years 
of  the  Christian  Church  before  the  Athanasian  Creed  was 
heard  of  t 

Such  strange  claims  and  such  strange  alternatives ! 

Now  I  want  to  ask  you  to  note  a  few  facts  concerning  the 
real  teaching  of  Jesus  and  his  Apostles. 

If  it  be  necessary  to  believe  the  Athanasian  Creed  to  be 


What  is  Christianity  f  59 

a  Christian,  or  the  Nicene  Creed  to  be  a  Christian,  or  even 
the  Apostles'  Creed  to  be  a  Christian,  then  we  are  fronted 
with  the  somewhat  startling  fact  that  not  one  single  one  of 
the  Apostles  was  a  Christian  according  to  any  record  we 
have  of  them ;  and  Jesus  himself  was  not  a  Christian  ! 

Study  if  you  will,  read  with  a  little  care,  the  first  three 
Gospels.  I  omit  the  fourth  because  every  competent 
scholar  knows  that  the  fourth  Gospel  is  not  so  much  a  life 
of  Jesus  as  it  is  a  theological  treatise.  He  knows  that  it 
was  written,  not  by  John,  but  by  some  unknown  hand  some- 
where during  the  first  half  of  the  second  century.  Nobody 
knows  who  wrote  it,  and  it  carries  not  the  authority  of  an 
eye-witness  or  a  hearer  at  all. 

But  let  me  note  that  even  in  the  Gospel  of  John  there  is 
no  teaching  of  the  doctrine  of  the  Trinity.  In  it  —  and  I 
have  had  the  text  quoted  to  me  hundreds  of  times  as 
though  it  settled  the  question,  and  that  is  the  reason  I  quote 
it  now  —  Jesus  is  represented  as  saying,  "I  and  my  father 
are  one."  But,  unfortunately  for  the  argument,  he  is  repre- 
sented as  praying  in  the  immediate  context  that  the  dis- 
ciples may  be  one  with  him  precisely  as  he  is  one  with  the 
Father. 

So,  if  the  first  text  proves  the  deity  of  Jesus,  the  other 
one,  also  reported  from  the  lips  of  Jesus,  proves  the  deity  of 
all  the  disciples. 

But,  as  you  read  the  first  three  Gospels,  there  is  a  conspic- 
uous absence  of  almost  every  single  doctrine  that  is  regarded 
as  essential. 

If  Jesus,  as  the  second  person  in  the  Trinity,  came  into 
this  Vv'orld  on  purpose  to  save  people  from  the  fall,  does  it 
not  seem  a  little  strange  that  he  does  not  anywhere  make 
the  slightest  allusion  to  it .? 


6o  Religio7t  for  To-day 

Jesus  never  said  anything  about  the  fall  of  man,  or  Adam, 
or  Eve,  or  the  serpent,  or  anything  of  the  kind, —  apparently 
knows  nothing  about  them.  He  says  nothing  about  the  doc- 
trine of  the  atonement ;  he  says  nothing  about  the  Trinity. 

There  is  hardly  anything  which  according  to  these  popu- 
lar creeds  is  essential  to  Christianity  which  Jesus  anywhere 
touches  or  appears  to  care  about  in  any  way  whatever. 

There  has  been  then,  I  say,  this  progress,  this  growth, 
from  generation  to  generation  and  from  century  to  century, 
of  what  has  come  to  be  called  Christian  belief.  And  that 
belief  has  never  been  absolutely  fixed  concerning  any  one  of 
these  great  doctrines. 

If  I  had  time  this  morning  to  enter  into  a  discussion  of 
the  doctrine  of  the  atonement,  I  could  show  you  that  con- 
cerning it  a  similar  thing  is  true. 

For  the  first  thousand  years  of  Christian  history  the 
Church  Universal  believed  in  some  form  that  the  sufferings 
and  death  of  Jesus  were  a  price  paid  to  the  devil  for  the 
redemption  of  mankind.  That  is,  they  believed  that  by 
right  of  conquest  Satan  had  come  to  be  the  ruler  of  man- 
kind, the  king  of  this  world.  And  God  agreed  with  the 
devil  to  let  him  have,  to  torture  and  put  to  death,  his  old 
adversary,  the  leader  of  the  angels  before  he  was  cast  out, 
as  the  price  of  the  redemption  of  men.  This  was  the  doc- 
trine for  a  thousand  years.  God  is  represented  as  having 
cheated  or  outwitted  the  devil.  The  devil  supposed  he  was 
going  to  keep  Christ  forever.  He  did  not  know  there  was 
anything  divine  about  his  nature  ;  and  so,  even  after  he  had 
entered  into  the  bargain,  he  lost  the  price  on  which  he  had 
agreed. 

I  am  not  caricaturing  the  doctrine :  I  am  simply  stating 
what  was  written  about  and  preached  for  a  thousand  years. 


What  is  Christianity  f  6 1 

And  this  doctrine  of  the  atonement  has  passed  through 
ten  or  fifteen  or  twenty  transformations  since  that  day. 

So  in  regard  to  any  one  of  the  great  doctrines.  Instead 
of  there  having  been  an  original  and  clear  and  defined  reve- 
lation of  divine  truth  at  the  first,  held  throughout  the  Church 
the  entire  length  of  its  history,  there  has  been  change  from 
age  to  age ;  and  there  is  nothing  that  all  those  who  wish  to 
call  themselves  Christians  are  agreed  upon  to-day  as  to  what 
is  essential  to  Christianity.  Still  the  Greek  Church  and  the 
Reman  Church  and  the  Protestant  churches  are  pitted 
against  each  other,  and  the  different  denominations  of  the 
Protestant  churches  against  themselves,  and  all  of  them 
against  us  poor  liberals,  who  claim  the  right  to  be  free  and 
accept  the  results  of  modern  study  and  investigation. 

Now,  let  us  raise  the  question  from  the  point  of  view  of 
the  modern  world  as  to  what  is  essential  in  Christianity. 

The  ceremonies,  are  they?  The  cult.?  Do  you  know, 
friends,  there  is  nothing  original  in  the  cult  1  Almost  every 
single  one  of  the  ceremonies  in  the  Church  are  pagan  in 
origin  and  hundreds  of  years  older  than  Christianity.  For 
example,  the  eucharist,  holy  water,  baptism, —  all  this  cere- 
monial can  be  traced  to  Egypt  and  other  parts  of  the  pagan 
world  long  before  Christianity  was  heard  of. 

Is  it  the  doctrines  ?  We  have  already  seen  that  there  is 
no  consensus  of  opinion  in  regard  to  the  acceptance  of  the 
doctrines.  But  hardly  a  single  one  of  the  doctrines  is  origi- 
nal with  Christianity. 

You  find  the  Trinity  in  Egypt,  in  India,  all  over  the  antique 
world.  You  find  the  virgin-birth  in  almost  every  one  of  the 
great  pagan  religions.  A  dozen,  twenty,  twenty-five  heroes 
and  demigods  have  been  virgin-born.  Almost  every  one  of 
these  doctrines  can  be  paralleled  in  the  history  of  Buddhism. 


62  Religion  for  To-day 

There  is,  today,  in  one  of  the  churches  in  Europe  a  statue 
of  Isis  and  Horus,  the  virgin  mother  and  her  child,  from 
ancient  Egypt,  rechristened,  and  doing  duty  for  Mary  and 
Jesus. 

So  little,  then,  are  these  doctrines  original. 

What  is  it,  then,  that  Christianity  brought  to  the  world, 
which  we  cling  to  with  passionate  love  to-day  and  are  not 
willing  to  let  go  ? 

The  great  contribution  to  the  world  which  Christianity 
has  made,  which  is  original,  which  is  unique,  which  is 
precious  to  every  loving  and  tender  heart,  is  the  ideal  of  the 
life,  the  character,  the  spirit,  the  teaching  of  the  Nazarene; 
Jesus,  his  spiritual  attitude,  his  love,  his  human  sympathy, 
his  tenderness,  his  sacrifice,  his  willingness  to  help. 

These  are  the  essential  things  in  Christianity,  and  these 
alone. 

The  doctrines  as  they  have  been  held  in  the  past  are  all 
of  them  destined  to  pass  away.  The  thing  that  we  cling  to 
in  this  modern  world  and  are  going  to  cling  to  more  and 
more  is  simply  the  ascertained  truth  of  the  universe  as  fast 
and  far  as  it  can  be  discovered.  This  is  to  be  the  external 
form  and  framework  of  things  here,  is  the  material  out  of 
which  we  are  to  construct  our  theological  theories, — for 
theological  theories  we  shall  construct  in  the  future  as  men 
have  constructed  them  in  the  past. 

But  the  one  thing  that  grows  brighter,  and  fairer,  and 
sweeter,  age  after  age,  is  this, —  the  Christ  ideal,  that  lumi- 
nous, leading  star  of  human  hope  and  of  divine  helpfulness. 
There  is  nothing  to  match  it  in  any  other  religion,  nothing 
so  sweet,  nothing  so  fair,  nothing  so  tender. 

The  spiritual  attitude  of  Jesus  seems  to  me  simply  per- 
fect.    I  cannot  understand  how  in   any  age  in  the  future  it 


What  is  Christianity  ?  63 

can  be  outgrown.  I  am  not  referring  to  the  limited  thought 
of  Jesus, —  Jesus  shared  with  his  age  many  of  the  intellect- 
ual theories  which  the  world  has  already  outgrown, —  I  am 
referring  now  to  his  spiritual  attitude.  Was  there  ever  any- 
thing diviner  in  the  history  of  man  than  that  simple,  child- 
like, perfect  trust  in  the  Father  ?  Trust  for  every  day,  trust 
for  every  night ;  a  trust  when  he  was  hungry,  a  trust  when 
he  was  lonely  and  sorrowful ;  a  trust  when  the  great  hopes 
of  his  life  had  been  dashed  and  seemed  to  be  passing  away. 

I  think  there  is  nothing  so  sublime  in  the  history  of  all 
the  past  as  that  figure  of  Jesus  on  the  cross  that  Friday 
afternoon  outside  the  walls  of  the  city,  surrounded  by  the 
Roman  soldiers  and  the  mob, —  he,  the  gentle  teacher,  he 
who  loved  his  friends,  and  who  so  loved  his  enemies  that,  as 
he  was  swooning  into  death,  he  said,  "  Father,  forgive  them, 
they  know  not  what  they  do."  Hanging  there  with  all  of 
his  hopes  an  apparent  failure,  wondering  whether  God  him- 
self had  not  forgotten  and  let  go  his  hand,  and  yet  with  a 
trust  that  still  clung  in  the  darkness  and  the  weakness,  so 
that  he  fainted  through  death  into  immortal  triumph.  The 
victory  over  the  thought,  the  love,  the  reverence,  the  wor- 
ship of  mankind,  such  as  has  never  been  won  by  any  other 
historic  figure  in  all  the  world !  This  perfect  trust  in  the 
Father ! 

I  know  of  nothing  finer  than  this  spiritual  attitude  of 
Jesus. 

And  then  that  other  side  of  his  nature,  his  relation 
towards  his  fellow-men.  A  service  unstinted !  Nothing 
grander  was  ever  said  about  any  man  that  ever  lived  than 
was  said  about  Jesus :  "  he  made  himself  of  no  reputation  "  ; 
he  cared  nothing  for  fame  or  human  greatness ;  "he  went 
about  doing  good  "  ;  he  sacrificed  time,  strength,  love,  gave 


64  Religio7i  for  To-day 

himself  utterly  that  he  might  help  one  of  the  least  of  these 
his  brethren. 

I  say,  then,  that  the  Christianity  of  the  future  is  to  be 
made  up  of  these  two  elements :  all  truth  for  the  theological 
side,  however  gained  and  through  whatever  source ;  then 
the  spiritual  attitude  towards  God  and  towards  man  of 
Jesus. 

Now  if  the  churches,  friends,  can  ever  prove  that  these 
two  are  not  Christian,  then  it  will  be  the  saddest  day  that 
Christianity  has  ever  seen.  For  they  will  have  proved  that 
there  is  something  in  the  world  that  is  better  than  Chris- 
tianity. For  there  can  be  nothing  finer  than  this:  —  truth 
for  the  thought  side ;  the  spirit  and  temper  of  Jesus  for  the 
feeling,  the  aspiration  side. 

There  can  be  nothing  finer  than  that,  nobler  than  a  com- 
bination like  that. 

Now  let  us  at  the  end,  just  one  moment,  notice  the  one 
solemn  utterance  of  Jesus  on  this  subject.  If  he  be  cor- 
rectly reported  in  the  lesson  which  I  read  this  morning,*  he 
is  setting  forth  for  all  time  what  in  his  judgment  are  the 
conditions  of  entrance  into  heaven.  Here  is  this  solemn 
scene  of  judgment,  the  sheep  on  his  right  hand,  the  goats 
on  his  left.  He  sends  one  of  them  into  outer  darkness,  and 
the  other  into  eternal  felicity. 

I  am  not  discussing  the  question  of  future  punishment 
now ;  I  simply  wish  you  to  fix  your  attention  on  the  condi- 
tions of  admission  to  heaven  as  Jesus  sets  them  forth. 

Now,  when  he  speaks  to  these  on  his  right  hand,  that  he 
calls  the  blessed  of  his  Father  and  who  are  to  inherit  the 
kingdom  prepared  for  them  from  the  foundation  of  the 
world,  what  does  he  say .? 

*  The  last  part  of  the  twenty-fifth  chapter  of  Matthew. 


What  is  Christianity  f  65 

Does  he  catechise  them  as  to  what  they  believed  ?  Not 
one  single  syllable  of  belief  in  any  doctrine  whatsoever. 
Nothing  about  foreordination ;  nothing  about  the  Bible ; 
nothing  about  the  Trinity ;  nothing  about  his  own  character 
or  authority.  Simply  as  to  whether  they  have  been  good. 
Good,  that  is  all.  Have  they  helped,  have  they  tried  to 
lessen  the  sum  of  human  misery?  Have  they  cared  for 
their  fellow-man  ?  Not  a  word  about  ceremony,  about  mem- 
bership in  a  church  ;  not  a  word  about  any  priesthood ; 
not  one  single  thing  that  all  the  churches  to-day  are  de- 
claring to  be  absolutely  essential  to  Christian  character  and 
Christian  life, —  not  one  word  about  any  of  them  ! 

Those  who  have  tried  to  be  good  and  help  their  fellow- 
men  are  the  ones  before  whose  feet  the  door  of  eternal  felic- 
ity opens  with  welcome.  And  the  others  are  condemned,  not 
for  lack  of  belief,  but  simply  for  lack  of  character  and  con- 
duct, nothing  else. 

Now,  then,  let  me  say  here  as  my  final  word,  according 
to  the  standards  of  the  popular  churches  to-day,  not  a  single 
one  of  the  Apostles  was  a  Christian,  and  Jesus  was  not  a 
Christian  ;  and  if  Jesus  should  come  here  to  New  York  in 
this  year  1897,  and  should  go  before  a  board  of  examiners, 
petitioning  for  admission  into  any  one  of  the  churches,  there 
is  not  a  single  one  that  could  take  him  in,  provided  they 
asked  of  him  the  same  questions  which  they  ask  other  can- 
didates. 

And,  though  they  all  say  that  we  Unitarians  are  not  Chris- 
tians, I  verily  believe  that  if  Jesus  were  here  he  would  find 
himself  at  home  in  the  midst  of  our  simple  service  that 
teaches  just  what  he  taught, —  the  love  of  God  and  the  ser- 
vice of  man  as  the  great  essentials  of  all  true  religion. 


GOD    AS    INSIDE    THE    UNIVERSE, 
NOT    OUTSIDE. 


God  is  spirit.  Before  coming  to  consider  the  problem 
of  belief  in  God  as  it  faces  us  to-day,  I  wish  to  indicate  to 
you  some  of  the  steps  of  thought  that  humanity  has  nat- 
urally, inevitably  taken. 

When  I  was  a  boy  I  was  brought  up  to  believe  that  men 
originally  knew  the  true  and  only  God,  and  that  they  wil- 
fully and  wickedly  departed  from  him  and  took  up  the 
worship  of  strange  deities,  of  idols. 

Milton,  you  will  remember,  teaches  in  his  ''Paradise 
Lost"  that  all  the  other  religions  outside  of  Christianity  are 
inventions  of  the  fallen  angels ;  that  they  thus  did  what 
they  could  to  divert  mankind  from  paying  the  worship  to 
God  which  they  owed  to  him,  and  induced  them,  under 
these  false  pretences,  to  pay  that  worship  to  themselves. 
And  yet  we  know  very  well  to-day  that  polytheism,  the 
worship  of  many  gods,  was  one  of  the  most  natural  steps 
in  thinking,  in  living,  that  mankind  could  take.  We  know, 
indeed,  that  in  a  certain  stage  of  human  development  it  is 
simply  inevitable.  Polytheism  represents  one  phase  of  the 
belief  of  these  far-away  childlike  men.  Awaking  to  con- 
sciousness, they  are  able  to  say,  "I  am  I,"  to  recognize 
their  own  individuality ;  and  then  they  begin  to  look  around 
them,  in  their  crude  and  ignorant  way  to  ask  questions, 
and   as   best   they  can   to   answer   those   questions.     They 


God  Inside  the  Universe  6/ 

neither  have  nor  can  have  any  conception  of  the  unity  of 
things. 

Why  should  we  expect  man  two  or  three  hundred  thou- 
sand years  ago,  or  even  ten  thousand  years  ago,  to  know 
concerning  this  universe  what  we  have  only  discovered  and 
demonstrated  during  our  own  lifetime  ?  As  they  then 
looked  abroad,  it  was  inevitable  that  they  should  suppose 
that  the  universe  or  the  world,  as  they  saw  it  and  felt  it,  was 
the  manifestation,  not  of  one  power,  but  of  many  powers, — ■ 
powers  irreconcilable  with  each  other;  powers  which  con- 
flicted ;  powers  good  on  the  one  hand,  evil  on  the  other. 

Why  should  we  expect  them  to  understand  that  the 
same  being  that  made  light  made  darkness  also,  which 
seemed  to  them  its  antithesis  ? 

Why  should  we  expect  them  to  trace  heat  and  cold  to 
the  same  source  ? 

Why  should  we  suppose  that  they  would  be  able  to 
worship  the  sun  as  the  source  and  giver  of  life,  and  at  the 
same  time  to  recognize  that  it  was  this  power  that  brought 
devastation  and  destruction  ?  As  then  they  looked  over  the 
face  of  things  it  was  inevitable  that  they  should  suppose 
that  there  were  many  powers  at  work  in  the  world  and  out- 
side of  it. 

And  note  another  thing.  Men  in  all  ages  have  naturally 
personified  these  forces.  Naturally,  did  I  say  ?  Inevitably. 
Men  have  never  been  able  to  conceive  power  except  as 
will-power.  We  cannot  understand  it  any  other  w^ay  to-day. 
Down  to  the  time  of  Kepler,  the  famous  astronomer  who 
discovered  the  laws  of  planetary  motion,  even  he  was  able 
to  understand  the  orderly  movements  of  these  planets  only 
by  supposing  that  an  angel  divinely  appointed  to  that 
mission  resided  in  and  guided  each  one  of  them. 


68  Religion  for  To-day 

And  our  immediate  ancestors  here  in  the  New  World 
attributed  blight  and  frost  and  storm  and  lightning  and  pes- 
tilence and  all  sorts  of  evil  things  to  the  agency  of  one  evil 
spirit  or  a  million.  It  did  not  occur  to  them  to  trace  them 
all  to  the  one  divine  hand  and  source. 

I  say,  then,  that  polytheism  was  an  inevitable  step  in  the 
growth  of  the  human  mind. 

And,  though  translators  have  disguised  it  for  us,  poly- 
theism is  in  the  very  first  words  of  the  Bible.  The  Hebrews 
were  not  monotheists  from  the  time  of  Abraham  down : 
they  began  as  polytheists  and  nature  worshippers,  the  same 
as  all  other  people.  The  first  words  of  the  Bible,  if  they 
were  correctly  translated,  would  read,  "  In  the  beginning  the 
strong  ones  (plural)  created  the  heavens  and  the  earth." 
The  word  is  a  plural  word,  the  same  word  which  in  the 
Psalms  is  translated  in  one  case  "angels." 

The  Hebrews,  then,  at  the  outset  were  polytheists  like 
their  neighbors.  They  passed  over  the  road  that  every  part 
of  humanity  has  been  obliged  to  traverse  ;  and  to-day  there 
are  very  few  people  on  the  face  of  the  earth  who  are  not 
polytheistic  still.  I  will  touch  on  that  a  little  more  at  length 
when  I  have  taken  my  second  step. 

After  polytheism  comes  what  Max  Miiller  calls  henothe- 
ism, —  a  condition  of  mind  in  which  people,  while  they  be- 
lieve in  the  real  existence  of  many  gods,  believe  that  they 
owe  allegiance  to  one,  and  that  it  is  wrong  for  them  to 
worship  any  other.  Precisely  the  state  of  mind  of  people 
who  recognize  the  existence  of  the  President- of  France,  the 
Kaiser  of  Germany,  the  Czar  of  all  the  Russias,  and  a 
hundred  other  rulers  over  the  face  of  the  earth,  but  con- 
sider themselves  in  loyalty  bound  to  only  their  own  ruler. 

The  Hebrews,  through  a  large  part  of  their  history,  were 


God  Inside  the  Universe  69 

not  monotheists  ;  they  were  henotheists.  But  they  believed 
that  Jehovah  was  their  God  and  that  they  had  no  right  to 
worship  any  other.  Traces  of  this  are  perfectly  plain  to 
any  one  who  reads  the  Old  Testament  intelligently,  from  the 
beginning  almost  to  the  end. 

The  next  step  is  the  attainment  of  monotheism, —  the  be- 
lief not  only  in  loyalty  and  allegiance  to  one  God,  but  that 
there  is  only  one  God,  the  father  of  all  men  and  the  ruler 
of  all  the  earth. 

I  said  a  moment  ago  that  very  few  people  have  attained 
that  stage  of  thinking  even  yet.  I  suppose  not  one-third 
of  the  people  on  the  face  of  the  earth  are  in  any  proper 
sense  monotheists  even  to-day.  Throughout  almost  the  en- 
tire history  of  Christendom  itself  the  people  have  not  been, 
in  any  proper  sense  of  the  word,  monotheists  in  their 
worship. 

Even  if  you  omit  the  claim  that  might  reasonably  be  made 
that  the  God  of  the  Christians  has  been  a  man,  the  greater 
part  of  Christendom  has  not  even  worshipped  this  man  exclu- 
sively or  commonly,  but  has  worshipped  a  woman, —  Mary. 
The  man  had  become  so  highly  exalted,  so  far  removed 
from  their  needs  and  their  sympathies,  that  their  minds 
naturally  turned  to  the  mother,  Mary,  in  the  expectation 
that  she  would  plead  with  her  son  and  so  gain  for  them, 
through  him,  the  divine  favor. 

Then,  too,  they  have  worshipped  in  all  ages,  saints,  patron 
saints,  just  as  the  Greek  and  Romans  worshipped  their  tute- 
lar deities.  So  that  Christendom  has  not,  in  the  strict  sense 
of  the  word,  been  monotheistic. 

But,  not  to  dwell  on  this  step  which  the  world  has  taken 
in  its  way  up  to  the  lofty  height  of  monotheism,  let  us  face 
the  difficulty  which  fronts  men,  thoughtful  men  and  women, 


70  Religion  for  To-day 

to-day.  We  care  very  little,  except  as  a  matter  of  history, 
for  all  these  old-time  theories  of  polytheism  or  henotheism 
or  monotheism. 

The  great  thing  that  faces  the  earnest  men  of  the 
world  now  is  the  question  as  to  whether  they  can  believe 
in  God  at  all.  He  seems  lost  in  the  infinite  spaces  of  the 
limitless  universe.  Where  is  he?  How  shall  we  come  to 
his  seat  ?  Can  we  speak  to  him,  and  will  he  answer  ? 
Can  we  cry  with  the  thought  that  he  will  hear  t  Does  he 
exist?  Or  shall  we  accept  the  dictum  of  some  scientists 
who  tell  us  that  all  there  is  is  Nature  or  Force,  and  that  we 
puny  creatures  stand  here  watching  the  play  of  mighty, 
irresponsible,  unmoral,  careless,  if  not  cruel,  forces.  May 
we  believe  in  God  at  all  ? 

My  friends,  I  wish  you  to  note  one  thing  this  morning : 
I  speak  to  you  as  though  you  were  all  these  questioning 
scientists. 

I  do  not  propose  for  the  next  fifteen  minutes  to  assume 
anything.  I  propose  to  keep  myself  on  the  solid  ground  of 
absolutely  demonstrated  fact,  and  ask  you  to  see  where  we 
are. 

As  we  wake  up,  then,  to  self-consciousness  we  recognize 
the  fact  not  only  that  we  exist,  but  that  there  is  what 
Matthew  Arnold  calls  a  *' Power  not  ourselves," — a  Power 
outside  of  us,  separated  from  us,  over  which  we  have  no 
control. 

Let  us  consider  this  Power  now  for  a  little  while.  You 
may  call  it  Force,  you  may  call  it  Nature,  you  may  speak  of  it 
as  Law,  you  may  call  it  the  Universe,  you  may  say  it  is  It, 
and  not  He ;  I  care  not.  Use  any  term  you  please.  This 
Power  has  produced  you  and  me.  We  are  its  children.  As 
one  outcome  of  this  Power  here  exists  life, —  foot  and  hand 


God  Inside  the  Universe  7 1 

not  only,  but  brain ;  the  brain  of  a  Shakspere  that  dreams 
Hamlet,  the  brain  of  a  Goethe  that  dreams  Faust,  the  brain 
of  a  Jesus  that  dreams  Our  Father,  the  brain  of  an  engineer 
that  dreams  the  Brooklyn  Bridge,  the  brain  that  has  dreamed 
a  train  of  cars,  the  brain  that  has  dreamed  a  steamship  that 
ploughs  the  waves  and  brushes  them  one  side  as  though 
they  were  playthings.  All  this,  and  all  that  these  things 
merely  suggest, —  countless  wonders  and  marvels, —  are  the 
products  of  this  Power  that  is  not  ourselves. 

Now  note  ;  this  Power  is  eternal.  I  want  to  see  how  many 
of  the  attributes  that  are  ordinarily  attributed  to  God  we  are 
rationally  justified  in  attributing  to  this  Power.  This  Power 
is  eternal.  We  can  conceive  no  beginning,  we  can  dream 
no  end.  It  was  here  before  we  were  born  ;  it  will  be  here 
when  we  have  passed  away.  It  is  that  which  has  made  us, 
and  not  we  ourselves.     It  is  eternal,  then. 

Note  another  thing.  It  is  infinite,  boundless  in  its  reach. 
Can  you  think  any  limit  to  the  universe  ?  Let  me  give  you 
one  or  two  poor  hints  by  which  you  may  climb  up  into  the 
beginning  of  a  conception  of  what  it  all  means. 

Suppose  we  were  able  to  start  to-day  on  a  train  of  cars 
that  should  go  at  the  rate  of  sixty  miles  an  hour  for  twenty- 
four  hours  in  the  day  and  three  hundred  and  sixty-five  days 
in  the  year,  and  so  should  start  out  on  a  journey  to  the  sun. 
It  would  take  us,  travelling  every  day  and  every  week  and 
every  month  and  every  year,  more  than  one  hundred  and 
seventy  years  on  that  train  of  cars  to  reach  the  sun. 

Light  travels  it  in  about  eight  minutes  and  a  half.  But 
there  are  suns  so  far  away  that  it  has  taken  light  twenty-five 
or  thirty  millions  of  years  to  reach  us, —  how  many  more  we 
know  not. 

Suppose  you  try  to  think  the  limit  of  the  worlds.     Suppose 


72  Religion  for  To-day 

you  could  go  to  the  edge,  dream  of  an  edge  for  a  moment, 
and  look  over.  There  is  space,  infinite  space,  still  beyond. 
Suppose  you  could  build  walls  from  the  zenith  to  the  nadir, 
fencing  it  in.     Infinite  reaches  of  space  beyond  all  the  walls. 

This  Being,  then,  is  not  only  an  eternal  being,  but  it  is  an 
infinite  being.  It  is  not  only  eternal  and  infinite,  this  Being 
is  almighty. 

Let  me  give  you  here  again  one  or  two  suggestions  of 
power,  for  "  almighty  "  means  practically  nothing  to  us.  How 
can  I  suggest  to  you  the  power  of  gravity  which  holds  our 
little  moon  in  its  place  in  relation  to  the  earth  ?  Conceive, 
if  you  will,  a  bar  of  steel  a  mile  square.  Lay  it  down 
beside  the  Catskills  and  it  will  dwarf  their  highest  peaks. 
Stretch  that  bar  of  steel  if  you  can  from  the  earth  to  the 
moon.  Would  that  represent  the  power  that  is  needed  to 
hold  the  moon  in  its  place  ?  It  would  take  eighty-seven 
thousand  bars  of  steel  a  mile  square  to  match  the  power  of 
gravity  that  keeps  that  little  worn-out  asteroid  in  its  place. 
If  you  should  take  threads  of  steel  a  quarter  of  an  inch  in 
diameter  you  would  need  to  cover  the  earth  with  them  so 
that  they  would  be  no  more  than  six  inches  apart  in  order  to 
represent  the  force  of  gravity  that  holds  the  moon  in  its 
place  in  the  sky.  Then  remember  that  the  moon  is  a  little 
out-worn  planet,  and  this  whole  solar  system  of  ours  is  only 
a  little  tiny  flake  of  light  on  the  borders  of  the  blazing  glory 
of  the  infinite. 

Does  it  mean  anything  to  you,  then,  to  say  that  this  Power 
is  omnipotent  which  keeps  all  these  planets  in  their  places  in 
all  their  orbits,  singing  their  songs,  and  moving  through  the 
mazes  of  their  tireless  dance  ? 

Not  only  is  this  Being  eternal,  almighty,  and  infinite  ;  we 
know  to-day  that  it  is  one ;  we  have  demonstrated  that  the 


God  Inside  the  Universe  73 

power  which  is  at  the  heart  of  this  universe  is  not  a  thou- 
sand, not  a  hundred,  not  three  ;  we  have  demonstrated  that 
it  is  one, —  one  law,  one  power. 

We  have  found  out  now  that  the  stuff  which  makes  up 
the  substance  of  the  sun  is  precisely  the  same  kind  of  stuff 
that  we  tread  underneath  our  feet  in  walking  over  this  little 
planet.  We  have  found  out  now  that  the  forces  in  the  sun 
are  the  same  forces  that  we  are  dealing  with  here  every- 
day. 

Chemistry  has  reduced  the  infinite  variety  of  the  forms  of 
matter  to  some  sixty  or  seventy  elements ;  and  the  philo- 
sophical chemists,  those  who  can  predict  and  forecast  what 
is  coming,  are  beginning  to  tell  us  that  they  shall  undoubt- 
edly be  able,  by  and  by,  to  reduce  all  these  elements  to  one ; 
and  this  element,  this  one,  what  is  it  ?  Matter  ?  Do  you 
know  what  matter  means  ?  Nobody  ever  saw  an  atom ;  it 
is  even  inconceivable.  They  are  beginning  to  dream 
with  some  of  the  philosophical  men  of  the  time  that  they 
shall  find  this  atom  to  be  a  little  whirl  of  movement,  a 
vortex-motion ;  —  in  what  ?  An  element  of  which  we  at 
present  have  no  experience  under  any  name  that  we  can 
properly  call  matter.  We  know  also  that  never  since  the  uni- 
verse came  into  being  has  there  been  one  slightest  particle 
of  matter  that  has  passed  out  of  being,  never  one  unit  of 
force  that  has  been  lost. 

Passing  through  infinite  changes,  they  still  are  forever  in 
existence,  forever  but  modifications  of  the  one  eternal  real- 
ity, which,  as  we  have  already  seen,  is  eternal,  not  only,  but 
infinite,  almighty,  and  one. 

Now  let  us  take  a  step  further,  and  note  another  signifi- 
cant fact.  As  we  look  out  upon  this  apparent  confusion 
and  contradiction  of   forces  and  movements,  we   find  that 


74  Religion  for  To-day 

the  universe  is  everywhere  intelligible.  It  is  an  intelligible 
order.  What  does  that  mean  ?  It  means,  if  inference  ever 
means  anything,  that  it  is  the  expression,  the  manifestation 
of  an  intelligent  Power.  There  is  nothing  anywhere  that 
intelligence  cannot  trace  and  comprehend.  So  that  the 
wisest  and  most  devout  men  say,  as  did  this  same  Kepler, 
to  whom  I  referred  a  moment  ago,  in  the  time  of  his 
wonderful  discovery,  "  O  God,  I  think  over  again  thy 
thoughts  after  thee."     It  is  an  intelligible  order. 

One  other  thing  of  most  remarkable  significance.  There 
are  signs  everywhere  of  an  intelligible  progress,  from  the 
beginning,  so  far  as  we  can  trace  it,  until  to-day :  the  uni- 
verse manifests  not  only  order,  but  orderly  growth,  orderly 
advance ;  until  we  can  add  to  those  great  words  of  Tennyson, 
and  say  not  only 

**  One  law,  one  element," 
but 

**  One  far-off  divine  event, 
To  which  the  whole  creation  moves." 

What  do  we  know  then  ?  We  know  that  there  is  a  Being 
not  ourselves,  capable  of  producing  life,  producing  all  that 
is.  We  know  that  it  is  an  eternal  being,  an  infinite  being, 
an  almighty  being,  one  being,  intelligent,  who  is  leading 
the  march  of  the  worlds. 

So  much,  friends,  is  demonstrated  scientific  truth.  What 
next  ?  Let  me  raise  another  question, —  perhaps  the  most 
crucial  one  of  all.  Is  this  Being  matter  or  spirit  ?  Let  us 
stop  and  think  for  a  moment.  On  any  theory  you  choose 
to  hold,  this  Being  has  produced  matter,  not  only,  it  has 
produced  what  we  mean  by  spirit.  I  do  not  know  what 
matter  is.  I  do  not  know  of  any  man  on  the  face  of  the 
earth'  wise  enough  to  tell  me.     I  do  know,  however,  that 


God  Inside  the  Universe  75 

life  is,  for  I  live ;  I  know  that  feeling  is,  for  I  feel ;  I  know 
that  thought  is,  for  I  think ;  I  know  that  love  is,  for  I  love ; 
I  know  that  hope  is,  for  I  hope ;  I  know  that  aspiration  is, 
for  I  aspire ;  I  know  that  worship  is,  for  I  worship ;  I  know 
the  existence  of  what  we  mean  by  soul,  because  I  am  self- 
conscious. 

What  do  we  mean  by  matter  ?  All  that  anybody  knows 
about  the  existence  of  matter  is  purely  an  inference.  I 
touch  this  desk.  Do  I  know  what  is  there  ?  I  only  know 
there  is  something  there  that  reports  itself  to  my  conscious- 
ness as  hard  and  as  of  a  certain  shape ;  that  is,  it  resists  my 
touch.  But  do  I  know  what  it  is  out  there  ?  The  sense 
of  resistance  which  I  interpret  as  meaning  that  there  is 
something  there  at  the  end  of  my  fingers  —  that  sense  is  it) 
here,  in  consciousness.  I  look  at  this  book  and  say  its 
cover  is  green  or  blue.  What  do  I  mean.?  I  know  that 
there  is  no  such  thing  as  color  down  there  connected  with 
that  book.  All  I  know  is  that  the  light,  as  it  is  reflected 
from  that  to  my  eye,  starts  a  sensation  in  my  nerves  which 
up  here  in  the  brain  is  translated  into  what  I  call  blue  or 
green.  It  is  here,  not  there.  I  look  at  those  flowers ;  I 
smell  their  fragrance.  What  does  it  mean  ?  It  means  again 
that  something  there  starts  a  sensation  in  my  nerves  which 
up  here  in  the  brain  is  translated  into  color  and  fragrance. 
During  the  service  this  morning  I  heard  what  I  call  music 
upon  the  organ.  Again,  what  does  that  mean  ?  It  means 
only  that  the  touching  of  what  we  call  the  keys  starts  move- 
ments of  the  air  which  strike  the  drum  of  my  ear,  causing 
sensations  in  my  nerves,  which  again  up  here  in  the  brain 
are  translated  into'  what  I  call  music. 

The  world  lives  in  my  brain,  in  my  consciousness ;  and, 
though  I  do  not  doubt  for  one  instant  the  reality  of  this 


'J 6  Religion  for  To-day 

external  world,  I  merely  mean  to  impress  upon  you  that  I 
know  directly  the  internal  world,  and  know  the  other  only 
as  a  matter  of  inference.  I  know  spirit,  soul,  thought, 
feeling,  love,  hope ;  I  know  these.  And  if  you  attempt  to 
tell  me  that  they  are  produced  merely  by  piles  or  aggre- 
gations of  particles  of  dead  matter,  you  are  talking  to  me 
nonsense. 

Huxley,  Tyndall,  the  greatest  thinkers  that  have  ever 
lived,  have  said  that  there  is  no  possible  way  of  bridging 
the  gulf  between  the  motion  of  dead  material  particles 
and  a  feeling  or  thought.  The  gulf  is  impassable.  It  is 
simply  impossible  for  me  to  think  soul  if  I  start  with  mat- 
ter ;  but  I  can  start  with  soul  and  think  matter. 

Mr.  Herbert  Spencer,  in  some  conversation  I  had  with 
him  some  years  ago,  said,  what  he  has  since  published  in 
his  books,  that  this  force  which  is  manifested  in  the  uni- 
verse around  us  is  precisely  the  same  force  which  wells 
up  in  us  under  the  form  of  consciousness.  He  said,  also, 
that  whatever  we  may  be  doubtful  about,  there  is  one  thing 
that  is  more  certain  than  any  other  conceivable  item  of 
knowledge,  and  that  is  the  existence  of  this  infinite  and 
eternal  Power  of  which  all  material  and  phenomenal  move- 
ments are  simply  manifestations. 

We  can  think  matter,  then,  if  we  start  with  mind ;  but  we 
cannot  think  mind  if  we  start  with  matter.  For  what  we 
mean  by  matter  is  only  so  much  of  the  manifestation  of 
this  infinite  power  as  is  beyond  the  limits  of  our  individual 
consciousness. 

Now  is  this  Being  personal }  Is  he  conscious  ?  Do  I 
believe  in  the  personality  and  consciousness  of  God  "i  Not 
in  the  sense  in  which  we  use  those  words  of  ourselves. 
What  do  we  mean  when  we  speak  of  our  own  personality? 


God  Inside  the  Universe  yj 

We  mean  to  refer  to  a  being  who  was  born,  who  is  limited, 
enclosed  in  a  body,  and  who  will  die. 

God  is  not  a  person  in  that  sense.  But  personality  is 
one  of  the  manifestations  of  this  infinite  Power.  The  Power, 
then,  which  has  produced  countless  persons  must  be  as 
much  as  person,  must  it  not  ?  That  which  is  evolved  must 
first  have  been  involved.  The  stream  does  not  rise  higher 
than  its  source.  We  must  suppose  a  cause  adequate  to  all 
effects. 

Is  God  conscious?  He  may  not  be  conscious  in  the 
sense  that  I  am,  but  my  consciousness  is  a  part  of  the 
manifestation  of  God,  and  he  must  be  as  much  as  con- 
scious. 

Herbert  Spencer  said  again  (and  I  beg  you  to  note  the 
profoundness  of  the  thought),  "  This  infinite  and  eternal 
Being  may,  for  all  I  can  see,  be  as  much  above  and  beyond 
what  we  mean  by  personality  and  consciousness  as  we  are 
above  and  beyond  vegetable  growths." 

The  Infinite  God,  then,  having  produced  personality  and 
consciousness,  if  he  be  not  personal  and  conscious  in  our 
sense  of  those  terms,  is  something  infinitely  and  unspeakably 
more,  grander,  higher,  better  than  these. 

And  now,  friends,  I  come  to  the  question  (for  the  clock 
warns  me  that  I  must  leave  many  things  one  side)  as  to  ^ 
where  this  God  is.  Let  me  suggest  to  you,  before  I  answer 
that,  the  wonder  of  some  of  these  sentiments  that  haunt  us 
and  appeal  to  us,  if  we  imagine  ourselves  in  a  purely  ma- 
terial universe. 

Byron  says  in  one  of  his  lines, — 

"  To  me 
High  mountains  are  a  feeling," 


yS  Religion  for  To-day 

and  he  speaks  of  the  presence  that  he  finds  on  the  shore 
and  in  the  wonder  of  the  woods. 

Did  it  ever  occur  to  you  that  it  is  a  little  bit  strange,  if 
this  universe  is  all  material,  that  one  lump  of  matter  should 
ever  think  of  such  a  thing  as  going  down  on  its  knees  to 
another  lump  of  matter,  however  big  it  might  be  ?  If  it  is 
simply  matter,  where  do  suggestions  like  that  come  from? 
Why  do  we  feel  the  sensation  of  the  sublime  in  the  presence 
of  mountains,  or  under  the  night  sky  of  stars  ?  What  does 
Wordsworth  mean  when  he  says, — 

"  And  I  have  felt 
A  Presence  that  disturbs  me  with  the  joy 
Of  elevated  thought ;  a  sense  sublime 
Of  something  far  more  deeply  interfused, 
Whose  dwelling  is  the  light  of  setting  suns, 
And  the  round  ocean,  and  the  living  air, 
And  the  blue  sky,  and  in  the  mind  of  man ; 
A  motion  and  a  spirit  that  impels 
All  living  things,  all  objects  of  all  thought, 
And  rolls  through  all  things." 

Whence  spring  such  sentiments,  if  all  is  only  matter? 
And  sentiment,  remember,  friends,  is  as  real  a  thing  as 
a  bowlder,  and  demands  to  be  accounted  for  quite  as 
much. 

Now  for  the  question.  Where  is  this  God  ?  Where  is 
this  Being  that  is  eternal,  infinite,  almighty,  one,  personal, 
conscious,  loving,  our  Father?  Where  is  he?  We  have 
lost  him,  friends,  because  the  universe  has  grown  to  us  to 
be  so  great.  We  are  much  in  the  condition  of  the  little 
child  whose  father  should  take  him  in  his  arms  into  the 
cathedral  of  St.  Peter's,  carrying  him  until  his  face  was 
within  two  inches  of  one  of  the  great  pillars,  and  ask  him 


God  Inside  the  Universe  79 

to  look  at  St.  Peter's.  We  have  lost  God  not  because  he  is 
so  far  away,  but  because  he  is  so  nigh.  He  is  infinitely 
nearer  to  us  than  he  used  to  be  in  the  old  theology  that 
placed  him  above  the  dome  of  blue.  It  took  at  least  a 
little  time  for  us  to  get  to  him  then.  But  where  is  he  now  .-* 
He  is  nearer  to  me  than  my  pulse  beat ;  he  is  nearer  than 
the  throb  of  my  heart ;  he  is  nearer  than  the  thought  of  my 
brain ;  he  is  nearer  than  the  aspiration  of  my  soul.  For  he 
is  the  power  by  which  the  pulse  beats,  heart  throbs,  brain 
thinks,  and  soul  aspires. 

I  am  his  child,  and  it  is  his  personal  thrilling  power  in 
and  through  me  that  constitutes  my  life.  I  bend  over  a  tiny 
blade  of  grass  coming  up  through  the  ground  in  the  spring, 
and  note  how  it  aspires  to  get  up  into  the  air  and  the  light; 
and  it  is  God  present,  pushing  it  up,  and  painting  it.  I 
look  at  the  flower,  I  smell  its  fragrance  :  it  is  God  unfolding 
the  wonder  of  that  flower.  God  is  its  beauty,  God  its  odor. 
I  look  into  the  faces  of  my  friends,  or  down  deep  into  the 
eyes  of  my  little  child,  and  thrill  with  the  thought  that  I 
have  shared  with  God  his  creative  power,  and  I  see  in  these 
deeps  the  divineness  of  a  soul  that  is  a  spark  of  the  Infinite 
One  looking  back  into  mine. 

Where  is  God  ?  He  is  here,  all  here,  and  all  at  the  far- 
thest bound  of  space. 

You  think  this  is  a  strange  statement  1  Let  me  give  you 
a  simple  illustration  that,  perhaps,  will  help  you  to  think  its 
reasonableness. 

Where  am  I  ?  You  think  you  see  me.  You  do  not.  You 
never  saw  me.  You  never  will  see  me.  They  used  to  talk 
about  men  as  having  souls.  I  do  not  believe  any  of  us 
have  souls.  I  am  a  soul.  I  have  a  body.  You  have  never 
seen  the  most  intimate  friend   you    have    on  the  face    of 


8o  Religion  for  To-day 

the  earth,  and  you  never  will,  any  more  than  you  see  God 
every  time  you  open  your  eyes. 

What  do  you  see  ?  You  see  clothes,  the  exposed  parts 
of  the  body.  You  look  into  the  eyes,  you  hear  the  sounds 
of  speech,  but  do  you  see,  do  you  hear  me  t  I  am  invisi- 
ble as  much  as  God  is  invisible.  I  am  intangible  as  much 
as  God  is  intangible.  I  am  omnipresent  throughout  my 
body  just  as  much  as  God  is  omnipresent  throughout  his 
universe.  When  I  am  writing  I  am  all  at  the  tips  of 
my  fingers,  putting  myself  into  expression ;  when  I  am 
speaking,  I  am  at  the  tip  of  my  tongue ;  when  I  am  think- 
ing, I  am  here  in  my  brain  ;  when  I  am  walking,  I  am  in 
my  feet.  I  am  at  any  point  or  part  of  the  body  which  calls 
for  me  in  order  that  it  may  execute  its  functions.  I  am 
omnipresent  throughout  my  body ;  but  can  you  locate  me 
anywhere  1 

A  French  scientist,  astronomer,  thinking  he  was  going  to 
say  a  profound  thing,  once  gave  utterance  to  this  saying :  "  I 
have  swept  the  universe  with  my  telescope,  and  I  find  no 
trace  of  God."  Strange  !  Why  should  not  an  anatomist, 
with  a  body  on  the  dissecting  table,  think  he  was  saying  a 
wise  thing  to  give  expression  to  this  sentence,  **  I  have  ex- 
amined this  body  from  head  to  foot  with  my  microscope, 
and  I  have  not  found  a  single  thought  ?  "  Would  you  consider 
it  a  wise  saying  ?  I  regard  it  as  a  very  silly  saying ;  but 
it  is  just  as  wise  for  the  anatomist  as  it  is  for  the  astrono- 
mer. When  you  can  see  me  with  a  microscope, —  that  is, 
the  soul,  the  I,  that  thinks,  feels,  hopes,  loves, —  then  hunt 
for  God  with  a  telescope  ! 

God  is  the  life,  the  thought,  the  soul  of  the  universe,  as  I 
am  the  life,  the  thought,  the  soul  of  this  body. 

Where  is  God,  then  ?     So  near  to  you  that  you  lose  him. 


God  Inside  the  Universe  8 1 

Let  me  read  you,  as  giving  expression  to  this  thought,  a 
couple  of  verses  :  — 

*♦  Oh,  where  is  the  sea  ? "  the  fishes  cried, 
As  they  swam  the  crystal  clearness  through. 

"  We've  heard  from  of  old  of  the  ocean's  tide, 
And  we  long  to  look  on  the  waters  blue. 

The  wise  ones  speak  of  the  infinite  sea : 

Oh,  who  can  tell  us  if  such  there  be  "i  " 

The  lark  flew  up  in  the  morning  bright. 
And  sung  and  balanced  on  sunny  wings ; 

And  this  was  its  song :  "  I  see  the  light, 
I  look  o'er  a  world  of  beautiful  things ; 

But,  flying  and  singing  everywhere, 

In  vain  I  have  searched  to  find  the  air." 

We  look  for  God  as  though  we  could  see  him  with  these 
external  eyes,  as  though  he  were  dwelling  in  a  palace,  like 
earth's  petty  kings,  in  some  bright  star  in  space ;  and  God 
all  the  time  folds  us  around  in  his  arms,  is  closer  to  us 
than  mother  or  father  ever  were.  Every  whisper  of  our 
hearts  finds  echo  in  his  infinite  sympathy,  every  pang  of 
pain  thrills  him  through.  Every  up-reach  of  the  hand 
clasps  his  for  leadership.  He  is  nearer  to  us  than  the  life 
we  live  or  the  sympathies  we  feel.  God  is  he  in  whom  we 
live  and  move  and  have  our  being. 


In  the  rest  of  the  sermons  of  this  series,  then,  I  shall  try 
to  give  you  some  of  the  results  of  this  great  thought  that 
God,  to  clear-thinking  people  in  the  modern  world,  must  be 
conceived  of  as  inside  his  universe  instead  of  outside.  In 
all  the  old  religions,  in  Christendom,  almost  from  the  be- 
ginning, God  has  been  thought  of  as  living  away  off  some- 


82  Religion  for  To-day 

where  in  space,  and  arbitrarily  ruling  this  world.  God  can 
no  longer  be  intelligently  thought  of  in  that  way.  It  is  God 
inside  the  universe  or  nowhere,  for  there  cannot  be  two 
infinites.  We  can  no  longer  think  of  God  as  a  great 
magnified  unnatural  man  sitting  on  a  throne.  God  is  the 
heart,  the  life,  the  soul  of  things.  And  the  laws  of  this 
universe,  the  forces  of  this  universe,  are  only  the  manifes- 
tations of  the  personal  order  and  power  of  Him  who  is 
all,  and  in  all. 


RELIGION    NATURAL,    NOT    STATUTORY. 


As  I  look  into  your  faces  and  consider  my  theme,  I  am 
troubled  just  a  little  over  the  question  as  to  whether  I  shall 
be  able  to  make  it  as  clear,  as  tangible,  as  easily  apprehen- 
sible as  I  wish.  It  is  indeed  one  of  the  crucial  subjects  of 
my  whole  series  of  sermons,  one  of  which  I  am  specially  anx- 
ious that  you  should  note  the  complete  significance.  I  shall 
try  to  make  it  luminous,  easy  to  understand ;  but  may  I 
venture  to  beg  of  you  to  supplement  any  defects  on  my  part 
by  a  careful  and  earnest  attention  ? 

I  am  to  attempt  to  set  forth  two  distinct,  separate,  op- 
posed theories  of  religion ;  and,  in  doing  so,  I  must  also  set 
forth  two  distinct  and  opposed  theories  of  the  universe, — 
for  I  had  occasion  to  tell  you,  as  some  of  you  at  any  rate 
will  remember,  several  Sundays  ago,  that  every  religion  that 
the  world  has  ever  known  has  sprung  out  of  a  cosmology,  a 
theory  of  things.  Every  religion  is  rooted  in  a  scheme  of 
the  universe,  and  takes  shape  from  it. 

As  you  study  the  characteristics  of  all  the  old-time  relig- 
ions of  the  world,  historic  and  dogmatic  Christianity  not 
excepted,  you  will  find  that  they  are  characterized  by  certain 
peculiarities  which  they  have  in  common,  which  set  them 
apart  in  a  class  by  themselves ;  and  the  declaration  with 
which  I  begin  this  morning  is  that  we  have  reached  that 
time  in  the  history  of  the  world  when  all  these  conceptions 
are  becoming   antiquated.      The   old   heaven  and   the  old 


84  Religion  for  To-day 

earth  are  passed  away ;  and  I  see  a  new  heaven  and  a  new 
earth,  a  new  universe,  a  new  thought  about  God,  man, 
nature,  destiny. 

I  wish,  then,  this  morning,  to  set  in  contrast  these  two  con- 
ceptions, if  I  may,  helping  you  to  understand  the  old,  helping 
you  to  comprehend  and  be  ready  to  welcome  the  new. 

In  all  these  old  religions,  Christianity,  as  I  said,  historic 
Christianity  until  this  generation  included,  the  world  has 
been  something  separate  and  apart  from  God.  This  is  the 
first  point  I  wish  to  make  clear. 

God  existed  before  there  was  any  visible  universe,  accord- 
ing to  this  theory.  Suddenly  he  determined  to  create  the 
world.  He  did  this  as  a  mechanic,  as  a  carpenter  might 
make  something  outside  of  himself.  He  did  it  by  fiat. 
He  said.  Let  light  be,  and  it  was ;  Let  the  earth  be,  and 
suddenly  it  appeared ;  Let  the  stars  appear  to  give  light  by 
night,  and  the  sun  to  give  light  by  day,  and  it  was  so. 

He  created  this  universe,  then,  as  something  entirely 
apart  from  himself,  while  he  sat  off  somewhere  in  space  and 
ruled  this  new  kingdom  like  a  king.  That  is,  he  ruled  it 
from  outside :  he  ruled  it  as  the  czar  rules  his  empire. 

Nature,  natural  forces,  natural  laws,  were  something 
apart  from  God.  They  indeed  manifested  God's  glory, 
they  indeed  were  the  results  of  his  skill ;  but  they  were 
something  external  to,  outside  of,  himself. 

Now,  in  the  next  place, —  for  I  must  not  dwell  on  these 
points  too  long, —  in  the  next  place,  in  this  world  men  and 
women  are  primarily  God's  subjects.  He  is  king :  they  are 
people  to  be  governed.  They  can  rebel  against  him,  as 
subjects  can  initiate  a  revolution. 

And  right  in  here,  friends,  is  the  significance  of  a  very 
famous   saying  of   Mr.   Moody,   a  reference  to  which   will 


Religio7i  Natural^  not  StaUttory  85 

illustrate  what  I  mean.  Some  years  ago,  discussing  the 
relative  importance  of  morality,  or  character,  and  religion, 
Mr.  Moody  said  very  tersely  —  and  from  his  point  of  view 
with  perfect  consistency  and  truth  —  that  morality  did  not 
touch  the  question  of  salvation.  A  man  might  be  as  moral 
as  he  would ;  but  he  was  not,  therefore,  at  all  certain  of 
getting  to  heaven.  Note,  I  say,  from  this  point  of  view, 
Mr.  Moody  was  accurate  and  consistent. 

To  illustrate,  suppose  one  of  the  czar's  subjects  is  a 
Nihilist:  he  has  broken  the  laws  of  the  empire,  and  is  a 
traitor.  If  he  is  allowed  to  go  on,  the  empire  itself  may  be 
in  danger.  Now  suppose  somebody  comes  to  the  czar,  and 
pleads  that  this  man's  forfeited  life  be  granted  him  on  the 
ground  that  he  is  an  honest  man  and  pays  his  debts,  that 
he  is  kind  in  his  family,  that  he  is  good  to  his  children, 
that  he  is  a  pleasant  neighbor.  Do  you  not  see  that  this 
would  have  nothing  whatever  to  do  with  the  fact  that  he 
was  a  traitor  and  had  forfeited  his  life  ?  The  czar  m.ight 
say  his  morality,  let  him  be  as  moral  as  he  will,  does  not 
touch  the  question  of  his  relation  to  my  empire  and  its 
safety,  as  a  citizen. 

I  speak  of  this  simply  to  illustrate  the  point  that  in  the 
old  theology  man  is  a  citizen  of  God's  kingdom,  to  be  ruled 
and  governed  as  a  king  governs  his  realm. 

Now,  in  the  third  place,  God's  commandments,  according 
to  this  old  theory,  are  purely  arbitrary  affairs.  God  issues 
any  command  he  pleases,  as  a  king  issues  any  command  he 
pleases  to  his  subjects.  There  is  no  natural,  no  necessary 
reason  why  the  command  should  be  this  rather  than  that : 
it  is  purely  a  matter  of  God's  will. 

Take  as  an  illustration  the  command  supposed  to  have 
been  issued  to  Adam  and  Eve  in  the  garden.     Do  you  not 


86  Religion  for  To-day 

see  that  it  was  purely  an  arbitrary  thing?  God  did  not 
say  that  the  fruit  of  this  tree  of  life  was  unhealthy,  would 
injure  Adam  and  Eve  if  they  ate  it.  There  was  no  natural 
reason  why  they  should  not  have  eaten  it,  so  far  as  the 
narrative  goes.  God  simply  told  them  they  must  not, 
making  this  an  arbitrary  test  of  their  obedience  to  him; 
and  he  threatened  an  arbitrary  punishment,  if  they  dis- 
obeyed. 

On  the  old  theory  of  religion,  then,  this  is  the  point  I  wish 
to  make  clear,  and  drop  as  soon  as  possible  :  God's  com- 
mands are  purely  arbitrary ;  they  do  not  exist  in  the  nature 
of  things.  Men  have  no  natural  way  of  finding  out  what 
they  are  ;  and  this  is  why  in  all  the  old  religions  the  sup- 
posed commands  of  the  gods  are  sent  by  angels,  by  special 
messengers,  or  else  have  to  be  written  down  in  a  book. 
There  is  no  other  way  by  which  anybody  should  ever  dream 
as  to  what  God  wants  him  to  do.  Natural  knowledge,  a 
perfect  understanding  of  the  constitution  and  laws  of  the 
universe,  would  be  of  no  assistance  whatever.  So  they  have 
invented  the  idea  of  a  supernatural  revelation  containing 
these  supernatural  and  purely  arbitrary  commandments  of 
God. 

Now,  in  the  next  place.  What  about  the  credentials  ?  If 
a  messenger  appears  in  some  distant  part  of  an  empire 
with  some  command  of  the  king,  the  people  say,  "  But  how 
do  we  know  that  this  comes  from  the  king  ? "  There  is 
nothing  in  the  command  itself  that  would  help  the  people 
any  to  settle  that  question.  So  the  messenger  must  bring 
his  credentials. 

And  here,  friends,  is  the  origin  of  all  the  signs  and 
wonders  and  miracles  of  the  world.  The  messenger  has 
revealed  some  sign,  wrought  some  wonder,  performed  some 


Religion  Natural^  not  Statutory  ^y 

miracle,  and  astonished  the  people  into  believing  that  he  had 
come  with  a  word  from  the  celestial  court. 

Do  you  not  remember  how  the  people  came  around  Jesus, 
when  he  was  here  on  earth,  and  said,  "  Give  us  a  sign ! " 
which  he  refused.  "  Give  us  a  sign,  so  that  we  may  know 
that  you  are  a  messenger  of  the  Divine." 

All  the  old  religions  of  the  world  are  full  of  these  signs 
and  wonders.  This  is,  note,  what  I  shall  have  to  refer  to 
by  and  by  with  an  added  emphasis. 

People  believe  in  the  presence  of  God  in  these  old 
religions,  not  on  account  of  the  beautiful,  perfect,  natural 
order  of  things,  but  because  of  disorder,  because  of  inter- 
ference of  some  sort,  because  suddenly  the  universe  has 
ceased  to  work  perfectly.  And  they  take  that  as  a  signal 
that  God  is  present. 

I  shall  have  occasion,  a  little  later,  as  I  said,  to  refer  to 
this  again. 

In  the  next  place,  I  wish  you  to  notice  that  the  rewards 
and  punishments  in  all  these  old  religions  are  just  as 
arbitrary  as  are  the  commandments.  In  other  words,  if 
you  did  not  know  from  some  supernatural  source,  it  would 
never  occur  to  you  to  attach  the  particular  penalty  to  any 
particular  action. 

Take  the  case  of  Job  as  an  illustration.  God  commands 
Job  to  be  true  and  faithful,  and  rewards  him  how, —  for  his 
goodness  ?  After  his  long  trial  and  his  constancy  he  is 
rewarded  for  being  good  by  having  thousands  of  cattle  and 
sheep  given  him,  by  being  made  honorable  among  his 
people,  by  having  new  children  given  him  in  the  place  of 
those  that  have  been  taken  away. 

All  through  the  Old  Testament  you  will  find  this  idea. 
You  find  it  also  in  the  New.     Recall  to  mind  for  a  moment 


88  Religion  for  To-day 

the  case  where  the  disciples  came  to  Jesus  in  the  presence 
of  the  blind  man,  and  said,  "  Master,  who  was  it  that 
sinned,  this  man  or  his  parents,  that  he  was  born  blind  ? " 

It  never  occurred  to  them  that  a  man  could  be  born  blind 
except  as  the  punishment  for  a  sin.  That  is  the  old  idea  in 
all  the  old  religions.  The  Bible  is  full  of  it  from  one  end  to 
the  other.  Disease,  punishment,  the  blighting  of  the  crops, 
the  loss  of  a  friend, —  any  calamity  is  a  punishment  for  sin. 
Thousands  of  people  to-day  have  no  conception  of  any 
natural  order  or  of  results  as  necessarily  following  certain 
natural  causes. 

What  does  religion  come  to  then,  friends,  all  this  being 
so  ?  Religion  is  an  external  affair.  It  is  the  coming  into 
the  presence  of  God  with  set  and  ordered  forms  and  cere- 
monies and  praises,  or  it  is  the  bringing  of  cattle  or  birds  to 
be  slain  and  burnt  as  offerings,  or  it  is  bringing  oil  or  wine 
to  be  poured  out  as  an  oblation. 

The  thing  I  wish  you  to  note  is  that  it  is  something 
entirely  apart  from  the  natural,  every-day  life  of  the  peo- 
ple. Religion  is  something  extra,  something  over  beyond 
good  living. 

We  make  that  distinction  still,  very  foolishly,  very  shal- 
lowly.  A  man  is  ever  so  good,  he  tells  the  truth,  he  loves 
his  fellow-men,  he  is  honest  in  business,  he  is  frank  and  free 
in  his  attitude  towards  all  truth,  he  is  an  ideal  man ;  but  you 
will  find  people  superciliously  looking  upon  a  man  like  that, 
and  piously  regretting  that  he  is  not  religious. 

And  here  is  a  man  who  is  anything  but  what  he  ought  to 
be  in  his  personal  character  and  relations  to  his  fellow-men. 
He  may  be  very  religious,  indeed. 

On  this  old  theory  religion  is  a  matter,  as  I  said,  of 
praises,  of  offerings,  of  oblations,  of  ceremonies,  of  services. 


Religion  Natural,  not  Statutory  89 

And  salvation,  what  is  that  ?  It  is  getting  somewhere  after 
death,  and  it  is  escaping  another  somewhere. 

Do  you  think  this  is  antique  ?  The  modern  thought  of 
Christendom  is  saturated  with  it.  One  of  our  New  York 
newspapers  within  the  last  week  has  been  sending  around 
to  ministers  the  question,  as  though  it  were  a  crucial  one 
and  touched  something  vital,  as  to  whether  a  man  who  did 
not  believe  in  the  virgin  birth  could  —  what  ?  Could  go 
to  heaven  !  Not  whether  he  would  be  a  good  man,  but 
whether  he  would  find  the  gate  shut  in  his  face  when  he 
attempted  to  enter  at  the  last  day  ! 

Salvation,  then,  I  say,  on  all  these  antiquated  theories  of 
the  universe  and  religion,  is  something  external,  arbitrary : 
it  is  escaping  hell  and  getting  into  heaven. 

Of  course,  incidentally,  they  tell  you  that  you  must  be 
good ;  but  the  essence  of  it  is  not  there. 

Now,  friends,  I  have  not  attempted  to  argue  so  far.  I 
have  tried  to  set  forth  as  clearly  as  possible  a  theory  of  the 
universe,  of  religion.  I  wish  it  merely  as  a  background  for 
that  which  I  believe  with  my  whole  soul.  I  wish  that  you 
may  simply  note  it  so  clearly  as  to  set  it  distinctly  apart 
from  the  other,  which  now  I  shall  outline  as  simply  and 
clearly  as  I  may. 

In  the  new  theory  of  the  universe  it  is  not  speculation, 
but  ascertained  and  demonstrated  truth,  that  the  universe  is 
not  external,  apart  from  God. 

This  phenomenal  manifestation  that  is  all  around  us,  that 
makes  up  the  magnificent  scene  of  heaven  and  earth, —  the 
sun  by  day,  the  starry  sky  by  night,  all  the  multiplied 
worlds  of  space,  this  fair  earth  with  its  carpet  of  green  or 
its  cloak  of  snow,  the  ocean,  rivers,  the  mountains,  the 
meadows, —  all  this  phenomenal  universe  is  merely  the  flow- 


90  Religion  for  To-day 

ing  garment  of  God,  forever  woven  in  the  ringing  loom  of 
time, —  a  garment  which,  while  it  conceals  him,  at  the  same 
time  is  the  only  means  by  which  God  is  revealed  to  his  chil- 
dren.    The  universe  is  the  visible  mantle  of  the  Divine. 

It  is  not  God's  kingdom  apart  from  himself  that  he  arbi- 
trarily rules.  The  laws,  the  forces,  the  life,  the  beauty,  the 
glory  of  this  universe  are  simply  the  present  eternal  activity 
of  God. 

Now  note,  in  the  second  place,  that  men  and  women  on 
this  theory  of  religion  are  not  so  much  God's  subjects  as 
they  are  his  children.  They  are  not  to  be  arbitrarily  gov- 
erned and  rewarded  or  punished  forever  according  to  what 
they  do,  as  to  whether  they  obey  his  arbitrary  commands  or 
not.  They  are  his  children,  to  be  loved,  to  be  punished  it 
may  be,  but  punished,  not  in  anger,  but  in  love,  and  for  the 
sake  of  their  reformation ;  to  be  trained,  taught,  educated, 
developed ;  to  be  unfolded  into  the  likeness  of  the  Divine. 

This  is  the  relation  in  which  men  and  women  stand  to 
God  in  the  new  universe  and  in  the  new  thought  of  the 
religious  life. 

And  now  note  that  God's  commands,  since  he  is  related 
to  the  universe  in  this  way,  are  inherent :  they  are  natural, 
they  are  necessary,  they  are  simply  an  expression  of  the 
laws  of  the  universe. 

This  theory  of  things  abolishes  the  distinction,  which  I 
believe  to  be  totally  unreal,  between  the  natural  and  the 
supernatural.  There  is  no  supernatural,  because  all,  from 
centre  to  circumference,  is  the  natural  expression  of  the 
life  and  the  wisdom  and  the  love  and  the  thought  of  God. 
All  is  a  part  of  this  eternal  constitution  of  things. 

Do  you  not  see,  friends,  then,  that  the  old  idea  of  God's 
will  being  sent  to  us  by  special  messengers  or  written  down 


Religion  Natural^  not  Statutory  91 

in  a  book  is  not  disproved,  but  simply  outgrown  ?  No  mod- 
ern man  attempts  to  prove  that  a  miracle  never  happened. 
He  simply  finds  himself  in  a  universe  where  the  whole 
thought  of  miracle  is  an  impertinence,  because  there  is  no 
place  for  it  in  the  midst  of  God's  eternal  order. 

Messengers,  preachers,  or  prophets,  or  whatever  they  may 
be,  proclaim  God's  truth,  utter  God's  law,  just  in  so  far  as 
they  are  able  to  discern  and  express  the  eternal  nature  of 
things ;  and  books,  however  holy,  are  transcripts  of  God's 
laws  only  in  so  far  as  they  are  correct  copies  of  the  eternal, 
natural,  necessary  right  and  wrong  of  the  universe, —  no 
more,  no  less. 

Now  what  are  the  credentials  of  God's  truth  in  this  mod- 
ern universe  in  accordance  with  this  theory  of  things  ? 

Friends,  just  stop  and  think  for  a  moment.  It  is  very 
easy  for  us  to  believe,  because  we  have  inherited  it  tradi- 
tionally, that  something  might  have  happened  two  thousand 
years  ago  on  the  other  side  of  the  ocean  that  we  should 
never  think  of  believing  if  it  should  be  reported  as  happen- 
ing in  the  State  of  Connecticut  yesterday. 

The  religious  sphere,  according  to  the  old  theory  of 
things,  is  a  sort  of  fairy  country,  "Jack  and  the  Beanstalk'* 
land,  in  which  any  conceivable  thing  might  have  happened ; 
but  we  are  never  ready  to  believe  that  such  things  happen 
in  any  country  that  we  have  ever  seen  and  known  or  of 
which  we  have  had  any  experience. 

Think  for  a  moment  what  it  means.  People  have  talked 
for  ages  as  if  the  ongoing  of  this  magnificent  procession  of 
natural  forces  and  glories  was  no  sign  of  the  presence  of 
God  at  all ;  no  God  needed  to  keep  the  worlds  in  their  per- 
fect and  glorious  round ;  no  God  needed  to  make  the  sun 
rise  to  the  fraction  of  a  second  every  morning,  tireless,  age 


92  Religion  for  To-day 

after  age ;  no  God  needed  to  account  for  the  endless  circle 
of  the  seasons,  the  resurrections  of  the  spring;  no  God 
needed  to  paint  the  glory  of  the  burning  leaves  and  bushes 
of  the  autumn !  But  God  apparently  present  when  there  is 
a  disturbance,  an  interference,  of  this  order ! 

Friends,  do  you  know  what  it  means  ?  We  read  without 
a  pulse  beating  even  the  tiniest  bit  faster  about  a  bar- 
barian general  ordering  the  sun  to  stand  still  until  he  gets 
through  slaughtering  his  enemies.  We  read  without  a 
tremor  how  the  prophet  pleases  one  of  the  kings  by  making 
the  shadow  on  the  sun-dial  of  Ahaz  turn  back  fifteen 
degrees.  Did  you  ever  wake  up  to  think  that  that  means 
the  earth  stopping  suddenly  on  its  axis  and  going  backward, 
and  then  starting  on  its  forward  movement  again  ? 

If  the  shadow  on  a  dial  to-day  should  go  back  by  half  a 
degree,  all  intelligent  people  of  the  world  would  stand 
aghast ;  and  they  would  not  take  it  as  an  indication  of  the 
presence  and  power  of  God.  They  would  say,  The  Almighty 
has  lost  his  grasp  of  things ;  and  the  wreck  of  the  universe, 
the  twilight  of  the  gods,  is  upon  us.  It  would  appall  man- 
kind if  the  slightest  miracle  should  ever  occur. 

Do  you  ever  stop  to  think,  friends,  that  it  would  mean 
that  henceforth  we  could  never  know  anything,  if  to-morrow 
morning  we  should  wake  up  and  find  that  water  did  not 
freeze  at  thirty-two  degrees  Fahrenheit,  that  gases  in  the 
laboratory  behaved  in  a  way  that  they  were  never  known 
to  have  behaved  before  ?  We  should  say  knowledge  is 
henceforth  at  an  end.  For  knowledge  means  that  you  can 
trust  the  universe,  and  know  that  the  eternal  wisdom  and 
the  eternal  order  can  always  be  counted  on. 

In  this  modern  universe  of  ours,  and  with  this  new  and 
grander  theory  of  religion,  it  is  not  interference  that  we  look 


Religio7i  Naturaly  not  Statutory  93 

to  as  a  token  of  the  presence  of  God.  It  is  this  eternal, 
matchless,  glorious  order,  speaking  to  us  of  the  tireless 
power,  speaking  to  us  of  the  flawless  wisdom,  speaking  to 
us  of  the  eternal  love  of  Him  who  is  at  the  heart  of  things. 

Note  as  the  next  point,  that  in  this  new  universe  of  ours 
there  is  no  such  thing  as  an  arbitrary  reward  or  an  arbitrary 
punishment.  Nobody  is  ever  rewarded,  nobody  is  ever 
punished,  in  the  old  sense  of  the  words. 

Instead  of  rewards  and  punishments,  every  rational  man 
to-day  recognizes  simply  results.  If  you  obey  the  laws  of 
the  universe,  such  and  such  things  will  happen :  if  you  dis- 
obey, such  other  and  unpleasant  things  will  happen.  But 
these  are  simply  natural  and  necessary  results ;  and,  let  me 
say  it  reverently,  it  is  inconceivable  that  God  himself  should 
ever  help  it  or  change  it.  For  we  do  not  believe  to-day  that 
we  can  count  on  God  as  interfering  with  his  left  hand  with 
what  he  is  all  the  time  doing  with  his  right  hand.  God  does 
not  contradict  himself. 

If  a  man  does  right,  he  will  get  paid  for  it.  How  ?  Let 
me  enter  here  for  a  moment  on  the  suggestion  of  a  very 
important  thought,  because  I  have  come  in  contact  with  it 
almost  every  day  of  my  life. 

I  have  had  people  say  to  me :  Why  was  my  child  taken 
ill  ?  I  have  loved  my  child.  I  have  tried  to  take  good  care 
of  my  child.  I  have  trained  my  child ;  I  have  tried  to  be  a 
good  mother.  Why  was  I  punished  in  this  way }  Men  come 
to  me,  and  say :  I  have  tried  to  be  an  honest  man.  There  is 
not  a  dollar  in  my  pocket  that  I  have  not  a  right  to.  I  have 
been  a  kind  father,  a  true  husband,  and  a  faithful  friend. 
Why  do  I  not  get  along  in  the  world  any  better  ?  In  other 
words,  Why  does  not  my  business  prosper  ? 

Do  you  not  see,  friends,  that  all  these  questions  presup- 


94  Religion  for  To-day 

pose  an  entirely  arbitrary  and  unreasonable  government  of 
the  world? 

The  man  who  has  financial  ability  and  who  is  able  to 
take  advantage  of  the  markets,  able  to  obey  the  financial 
conditions  and  laws  of  his  time,  will  make  money;  and  it 
makes  no  sort  of  difference,  so  far  as  that  is  concerned,  as 
to  whether  he  is  a  good  man  or  a  bad  man,  does  it  ? 

The  theory  of  Job,  the  theory  of  the  Old  Testament  all 
the  way  through,  was  that  prosperity  in  this  world  was  a 
sign  of  God's  paying  people  for  being  good.  You  remem- 
ber the  Psalmist :  he  must  have  had  a  curious  experience, 
certainly  very  unlike  mine,  when  he  says,  "  I  have  been 
young,  and  now  am  old ;  yet  have  I  never  seen  the  righteous 
forsaken  nor  his  seed  begging  bread."  He  must  have  had 
a  very  strange  experience.  I  have  been  young,  and  am  not 
very  old ;  and  I  have  seen  the  righteous  forsaken  and  his 
seed  begging  bread  a  hundred  times. 

And  remember,  friends,  it  is  not  written  in  His  universe 
anywhere  that  God  has  promised  to  pay  cash  for  good 
behavior. 

Jesus  said,  JBlessed  are  the  pure  in  heart ;  for  —  Why  t 
For  they  shall  have  a  hundred  thousand  dollars?  No,  they 
shall  see  God.  Blessed  are  the  peace-makers.  Why  ?  Be- 
cause they  shall  have  good  health  ?  No,  they  shall  be 
called  the  children  of  their  Father  who  is  in  heaven. 
Blessed  are  they  that  hunger  and  thirst  after  righteousness ; 
for  they  shall  have  what?  Have  their  galleries  full  of 
beautiful  pictures  ?  No,  they  shall  be  filled  —  with  what  ? 
With  righteousness ! 

In  the  realm  of  right  and  wrong  the  law  of  cause  and 
effect  holds  just  as  it  does  anywhere  else.  If  a  man  ploughs 
his  field   and  plants  his  crops  and  attends  them  carefully, 


Religion  Natural^  fiot  Statutory  95 

other  things  being  equal,  he  will  be  rewarded,  or  attain  the 
result  of  having  a  good  crop  ;  but,  if  he  neglects  that  for  the 
sake  of  going  to  church,  even  if  he  sits  up  every  night  in 
the  week  and  engages  in  earnest  prayer,  it  will  have  no 
eifect  whatever  on  his  crops. 

A  man  may  cultivate  his  own  character  ;  and  he  will  reap 
rewards  of  character.  If  he  wants  rewards  out  of  his  field, 
he  must  cultivate  not  his  character,  but  his  field.  This  is 
the  law  of  God  both  in  field  and  in  character ;  but  you  get 
your  results  in  the  realm  where  you  start  in  action  your 
causes. 

In  the  real  universe,  then,  you  are  "never  rewarded,  you 
are  never  punished :  you  reap  what  you  sow. 

I  wish  to  note  here,  in  passing,  one  grand  distinction  that 
you  ought  to  keep  in  mind  between  two  uses  of  the  word 
"law,"  which  are  perpetually  confounded.  When  a  lawyer 
or  a  judge  or  a  member  of  Congress  or  Parliament  is  talk- 
ing about  law,  he  refers  to  an  arbitrary  enactment  which 
has  been  passed  by  a  majority,  and  imposed  upon  the 
people  from  without.  When  the  scientist  talks  about  a  law 
or  when  we  talk  about  a  law  of  God,  we  do  not  mean  any- 
thing of  the  kind.  We  are  referring  simply  to  the  orderly 
procession  of  phenomenal  events.  We  say  that  it  is  a  law 
of  water  that  it  shall  freeze  at  thirty-two  degrees  Fahren- 
heit. We  say  it  is  a  law  of  gases  that  they  shall  do  thus 
and  so.  We  talk  about  the  law  which  governs  the  planets 
so  that  they  move  after  a  definite  and  ascertained  order. 

We  mean  simply,  then,  in  the  natural  and  universal  realm, 
when  we  use  the  word  "  law,"  to  refer  to  a  perfect  and  un- 
varying order  of  events,  not  to  a  statute  law  at  all. 

Now  what  does  worship  come  to  on  this  theory  of  relig- 
ion?    Worship  on  the  old  theory,  as  v.e  have  seen,  is  the 


g6  Religion  for  To-day 

bringing  offerings,  or  it  means  certain  ceremonies,  it  is  pray- 
ing, it  is  singing  psalms,  it  is  uttering  words  of  praise. 

Worship  on  the  real  theory,  in  the  real  universe,  and  as 
a  part  of  God's  real  religion,  is  simply,  when  we  analyze  it 
to  its  roots,  admiration.  He  who  admires  that  which  is 
true,  that  which  is  beautiful,  that  which  is  good,  worships ; 
and  he  worships  God  whether  he  knows  it  or  not,  simply 
because  everything  that  is  true  and  everything  that  is  beau- 
tiful and  everything  that  is  good  is  simply  so  far  a  manifes- 
tation of  God. 

He  who  admires,  then,  worships,  and  he  who  serves  God 
serves  him  by  being  good;  and  that  means,  when  it  is 
wrought  out  into  activity,  into  practical  life,  being  of  service 
to  one's  fellow-men.     There  is  no  other  way. 

Does  God  want  me  to  bring  animals  and  kill  them  and 
burn  them  for  him,  so  that  he  can  smell  the  sweet  savor  of 
them,  as  it  is  said  in  the  Old  Testament  he  liked  to  do.-* 
We  do  not  hold  that  childish  idea  of  God  any  more.  Does 
God  care  whether  we  sing  psalms  to  him  ?  I  do  not  believe 
he  does.  Does  God  like  to  sit  up  on  a  throne,  and  have  us 
come  and  prostrate  ourselves  in  the  dust  before  him,  mak- 
ing him  glad  by  just  so  much  as  we  abjectly  humiliate  our- 
selves t  I  do  not  believe  he  does.  Does  God  care  to  have 
us  spend  time  in  telling  what  a  great  and  wonderful  being 
he  is  ?     I  do  not  believe  it. 

Think,  friends !  Here  is  a  man  who  gets  up  on  a  throne, 
and  actually  likes  to  have  people  come  and  bow  down  in 
the  dust  before  him,  sing  hymns  to  him,  burn  offerings  in 
his  presence,  and  tell  him  what  a  wonderful  man  he  is. 
Would  you  have  any  respect  for  him  ?  I  should  not.  You 
would  say  a  man  who  likes  that  sort  of  flattery  is  by  just  the 
degree  of  his  liking  for  it  contemptible. 


Religion  Natural,  not  Statutory  97 

Now  I  think  that  God  is  fully  as  grand  as  my  ideal  man 
is;  and  I  do  not  believe  he  likes  that  kind  of  thing  any 
better  than  a  decent  man  would  like  it.  I  am  not  saying 
that  these  things  are  not  good ;  but,  if  we  think  that  we  are 
flattering  God,  buying  the  special  favor  of  God  with  them, 
or  purchasing  cessation  of  his  anger  on  account  of  it,  we 
are  very  shallow  in  our  thinking,  that  is  all. 

These  things  —  that  is,  the  expression  of  our  admiration 
for  that  which  is  above  us  —  thrill  and  help  and  lift  us.  If 
an  artist  stands  in  the  presence  of  one  of  the  masterpieces 
of  the  older  time,  admires  it  critically,  studies  it,  praises  it, 
it  lifts  and  helps  him.  If  we  give  expression  to  our  ad- 
miration for  some  noble,  some  heroic  deed,  we  are  the 
better  men  on  account  of  it. 

What  does  God  want  of  us  in  the  way  of  worship }  He 
wants  us  to  admire  all  that  is  admirable  ;  and  he  wants  us 
to  give  him  —  what.''  Not  the  cattle:  he  has  told  us  two 
thousand  years  ago  that  they  are  his  already.  He  does  not 
want  your  rivers  of  oil  nor  your  burnt-offerings,  nor  any  of 
these  things.  He  wants  you  to  do  justly  and  to  love  mercy. 
He  wants  you  to  be  a  true  man.  Can  you  be  anything 
better  than  that  ? 

Suppose,  for  example,  that  I  were  able  to  place  here  in 
your  presence  a  man  of  perfect  physique,  as  beautiful  as 
Apollo,  in  perfect  health,  and  that  man  should  have  a 
mind  that  was  like  a  pair  of  scales  in  weighing  truth,  as 
clear  as  an  electric  light  in  detecting  error  or  fraud, —  a  mind 
that  should  be  a  perfect  machine  for  the  discovery  of  intel- 
lectual truth.  Suppose  he  should  be  simply  ideal,  loving  all 
that  is  admirable  and  hating  all  that  is  evil, —  a  child  of  the 
Infinite  Spirit,  linked  with  him  by  that  tie  that  is  closer  than 
the  ties  of  blood.     You  would  say,  There  is  a  perfect  man. 


9^  Religion  /br  To-day 

Could  you  make  him  any  more  perfect  by  making  him 
religious  ? 

The  point  I  wish  you  to  note  is  that  this  man,  ideally 
related  to  all  the  laws  of  God  in  heart  and  mind  and  soul,  is 
already  religious  just  because  he  is  that. 

When  I  have  obeyed  all  the  laws  of  God  and  have  come 
into  right  relations  with  God  in  every  part  of  my  being,  re- 
ligion has  exhausted  itself  in  me,  and  can  do  no  more  for 
me ;  and  I  am  no  better  for  any  ceremonies  or  external 
forms  whatsoever. 

Mark  you,  I  am  not  saying  anything  about  these  external 
ceremonies.  If  they  help  you  to  be  a  better  man,  that  is 
the  test  by  which  you  are  to  try  them. 

All  this,  then,  leads  me  to  the  last  point, —  the  summing 
up,  the  conclusion  of  the  whole  matter,  which  is  that  relig- 
ion, on  this  theory  of  the  universe  and  of  the  religious  life 
which  I  have  been  discussing,  religion  is  a  life.  Religion 
is  a  life.  Let  me  illustrate  the  difference  between  what 
I  mean  and  what  people  are  thinking,  it  seems  to  me  two- 
thirds  of  them,  to-day. 

You  find  most  people,  if  they  stay  away  from  church 
a  particular  Sunday,  no  matter  how  good  a  reason  they  have 
for  doing  so,  will  feel  that  they  have  neglected  their  relig- 
ious duties  for  that  week.  If  you  have  gone  to  church 
every  Sunday  in  the  year,  and  that  is  all  you  have  done, 
you  have  neglected  your  religious  duties  very  sadly,  neg- 
lected the  most  important  of  them.     Why  "i 

Here  is  a  regiment  that  has  an  armory.  At  stated  times 
it  meets  in  the  armory  to  drill,  to  study,  to  go  through  the 
exercises,  to  get  ready  for  —  what?  To  get  ready  to  do  it 
again  ?  Not  quite.  To  get  ready,  if  the  time  ever  should 
come  when  they  are  needed  to  fight  for  the  country.  That 
is  what  it  is  for. 


Religion  Natural,  not  Statutory  99 

Would  you  say,  then,  that  in  time  of  war  the  regiment  that 
met  regularly  at  the  drill  hall  and  went  through  the  manual 
of  arms,  and  then  disbanded  and  went  home  again,  had  per- 
formed its  duty  by  the  country,  had  performed  its  patriotic 
duty?  However  badly  it  may  be  needed  at  the  front, 
though  the  capitol  be  in  danger  for  the  matter  of  that, 
every  regiment  is  doing  its  patriotic  duty  in  that  very  way, 
just  as  faithfully  as  you  are  doing  your  religious  duty  by 
merely  going  to  church.  But  what  about  religion  during 
the  week  ? 

The  drill  hall  is  for  practice,  to  get  ready  to  fight  in  the 
field.  The  church  is  simply  a  drill  hall,  a  place  where  you 
are  to  come  to  learn  what  you  are  to  do,  to  get  inspired  to 
do  it ;  but  the  field  for  your  religion  is  Monday  and  Tues- 
day and  Wednesday  and  Thursday  and  Friday  and  Satur- 
day. It  is  in  the  home,  it  is  on  the  sidewalk,  it  is  in  your 
bank,  your  ofiice,  your  manufactory, —  wherever  you  may  be. 

Suppose  you  cheat  in  your  business.  Will  the  elaborate 
knowledge  of  your  Prayer  Book  make  up  for  it  ?  Suppose 
you  slander  your  neighbor,  ruin  his  reputation,  and  injure 
his  chances  for  a  decent  living  in  the  world :  can  you  make 
up  for  it  by  attending  church  regularly  ? 

Do  these  things  touch  each  other,  friends  1  People  are 
always  talking  about  religion  in  business  and  business  in 
religion,  politics  in  religion,  and  religion  in  politics.  And  I 
have  heard  ever  since  I  was  a  boy  about  mixing  up  religion 
and  politics,  and  religion  and  business.  If  you  mean  by 
religion  clericalism,  ecclesiasticism,  priestcraft,  then  I  agree 
with  you ;  but,  if  you  mean  by  religion  the  only  thing  that 
God  can  mean  by  it, —  a  religious  life, —  then  you  have  no 
business  to  do  anything  except  to  mix  it  up  most  thoroughly 
with  your  politics,  to  mix  it  up  completely  with  your  business. 


I  oo  Religion  for  To-day 

It  is  the  man  who  is  a  true  and  noble  man  in  his  business 
who  is  a  religious  man,  the  man  who  is  a  true  and  noble 
man  in  his  family  who  is  a  religious  man.  It  is  the  man  who 
obeys  the  real,  vital,  eternal  laws  of  God,  inherent  in  the 
nature  of  things,  who  is  a  religious  man.  And  this  is  sal- 
vation. 

None  of  these  external  things  have  any  necessary  connec- 
tion with  any  place  in  this  world  or  any  other  world  that  you 
want  to  get  out  of  or  get  into.  I  have  no  fears  of  going  to 
hell :  I  have  no  care  about  going  to  heaven.  I  am  anxious 
to  keep  hell  out  of  me  and  to  get  heaven  into  me.  Then  I 
care  very  little  what  planet  I  am  on  after  I  have  left  this 
one.  I  will  take  care  of  my  relations  to  God ;  and  I  will 
risk  the  kind  of  association  that  I  shall  fall  into,  in  this 
world  or  any  other  world. 


STANDING    GROUND    FOR    TRUST. 


It  is  said  that  Prince  Alphonso  of  Castile,  considering 
one  day  with  some  friends  the  intricacies  and  difficulties 
of  the  Ptolemaic  theory  of  the  universe, —  that  being  at  the 
time  the  generally  accepted  one, —  declared  that,  if  he  had 
been  present  at  the  creation  of  the  world,  he  could  easily 
have  suggested  a  good  many  important  improvements, — 
which  was  undoubtedly  true.  But  his  objections  have 
been  answered  by  the  discovery  of  the  Copernican  theory, 
which  has  shown  that  the  difficulties  of  the  Ptolemaic  were 
only  imaginary. 

The  witty  Colonel  Ingersoll  is  reported  to  have  said 
some  years  ago,  when  some  one  asked  him  —  he  was  criti- 
cising the  order  of  the  world  —  whether  he  could  suggest 
any  improvements  if  he  had  his  way,  that  he  could  at  least 
suggest  one, —  he  would  have  good  health  catching  instead 
of  disease. 

It  seems  to  me,  however,  that  he  overlooked  what  I 
regard  as  undeniably  true, —  that  not  only  good  health,  but 
good  of  every  kind,  is  catching.  Good  health  is  contagious ; 
and  the  man  who  walks  down  the  street  smiling  and  cheer- 
ful and  happy  carries  inspiration  and  power  with  him  as  he 
goes.  And  good  of  every  kind  is  catching ;  and  it  is  not 
only  contagious,  but  it  is  so  much  more  wide-spread  and  so 
much  more  effectual  than  the  opposite  that  the  evil  is 
destined  by  and  by  to  be  outgrown  in  the  race  and  left 
entirelv  behind. 


I02  Religion  for  To-day 

John  Stuart  Mill  made  a  criticism  which  at  the  time  he 
made  it  seemed  to  be  unanswerable.  Regarding  the  world, 
in  its  then  present  order  and  condition,  as  a  final  and 
finished  product,  Mill  said :  God  cannot  be  almighty  and 
all-wise  and  all-good.  If  he  is  almighty  and  all-wise, 
then  he  cannot  have  desired  to  make  a  very  good  world ;  for 
he  has  not  done  it.  If  he  be  almighty  and  all-good,  then 
he  cannot  have  known  how  to  make  a  perfect  world ;  for 
he  has  not  done  it.  If  he  be  all-good  and  all-wise,  then  he 
cannot  have  had  power  to  make  a  perfect  world ;  for  he  has 
not  done  it.     I  quote  the  thought,  not  the  words. 

This  criticism,  I  say,  from  the  point  of  view  of  a  world 
supposed  to  be  finished,  is  entirely  valid ;  but  only  a  little 
while  after  this  criticism  was  formulated  the  science  of 
evolution  was  born,  and  the  world  was  brought  face  to  face 
with  entirely  another  problem. 

The  world  as  we  know  it  is  only  in  process.  It  is  not  to 
be  judged  as  a  finished  and  final  product.  Would  you  go 
into  an  apple  orchard,  and,  biting  into  an  apple  in  late  June, 

—  an  apple  that  is  to  be  ripe  only  in  the  last  of  September, 

—  would  you  judge  it  as  a  bad  apple  because  it  was  bitter? 
You  would  expect  it  to  be  bitter  while  it  was  in  the  process 
of  growth.  If  you  wish  to  judge  anything,  wait  until  it  is 
finished,  wait  until  you  can  see  the  outcome,  what  it  is  for. 

And  so  I  say  of  this  world.  In  the  light  of  the  science  of 
evolution  it  is  to-day  only  ir  process ;  and,  unless  you  can 
foresee  the  outcome  so  as  to  be  quite  sure  as  to  whether  it 
is  to  be  bad,  as  an  honest  man  and  a  clear-headed  one,  you 
must  at  least  suspend  judgment,  and  wait. 

I  do  not  wish  to  doubt  or  to  blink  any  of  the  great 
facts  of  suffering  or  evil.  They  exist,  open  to  every  eye 
and  appealing  to  every  heart,  whichever  way  we  turn ;  and 


Standing  Ground  for  Trust  1 03 

I  do  not  wonder  that  people  are  perpetually  brought  to 
a  stand-still  as  they  face  some  new  illustration  of  the 
world's  wrong  or  pain,  and  wonder  as  to  the  government 
of  the  universe. 

I  have  been  asked  so  many  times  since  I  have  been  in 
this  city  as  to  what  right  we  have,  in  the  face  of  these  facts, 
to  trust  in  God.  The  matter  has  been  brought  to  me,  and 
forced  upon  my  attention  so  frequently  that  it  seemed  to  me 
that  the  best  thing  I  could  do  was  to  attempt,  at  any  rate, 
an  answer.  You  will  not  expect  a  detailed  treatment  of  a 
theme  that  might  profitably  be  drawn  out  to  the  length  of 
volumes. 

And  another  thing  let  me  say  :  You  have  no  right  to  ask 
of  me  that  in  forty  minutes  I  should  answer  all  the  objec- 
tions you  can  bring  against  human  life  or  the  universe  as  it 
looks  to  you.  You  have  no  right  to  expect  that  I  should 
explain  all  these  difficulties.  I  can  only  attempt  —  what? 
This, —  to  discover,  if  I  may,  standing  ground  for  trust.  If  I 
can  find  a  place  where  we  may  stand  on  something  like  solid 
ground,  and  rationally  believe  in  the  goodness  of  God,  that  is 
enough  to  answer  the  practical  ends  of  living. 

I  do  not  expect  to  answer  many  questions.  Millions  have 
been  asked,  only  a  very  few  answered.  Mystery  faces  us  on 
every  hand.  If  some  one  of  you  will  explain  to  me  a  grass- 
blade  a  finger  length  high,  I  will  explain  for  you  all  the  rest 
of  the  universe.  We  face  infinite  mystery  on  every  hand. 
It  is  fortunate  for  us  that  we  do ;  for,  if  we  could  read  the 
riddle  of  this  universe,  we  should  be  reading  our  death  war- 
rants. There  would  be  nothing  else  left  for  us  to  do. 
Hope  of  anything  like  immortality  would  be  absurd, —  not 
only  absurd,  but  a  curse,  —  if  we  knew  everything,  and 
nothing  more  was  left  for  us  to  investigate. 


104  Religion  for  To-day 

So,  I  say,  I  am  not  going  to  attempt  to  answer  all  your 
questions.  I  am  merely  going  to  see  if  I  can  find  standing 
ground  for  reasonable  trust. 

Now  what  are  the  chief  objections  that  are  brought 
against  this  world? 

I  think  I  can  classify  them  for  the  purpose  of  the  morn- 
ing under  three  or  four  main  heads. 

In  the  first  place  is  the  fact  of  pain,  suffering;  next 
is  what  we  call  moral  evil ;  then  comes  the  unsatisf actori- 
ness  of  human  life, —  the  fact  that  we  never  succeed  in 
getting  all  we  want,  in  doing  all  we  want,  in  becoming  all 
we  want,  that  all  human  life,  even  at  the  best,  is  frag- 
mentary ;  and,  finally,  the  last  and  supposed  overwhelming 
evil  of  death. 

I  wish  to  refer  briefly  to  these  four,  and  to  the  evils  that 
are  classified  under  them. 

In  the  first  place,  then,  let  us  look  for  a  moment  at  this 
great  problem  of  pain.  Is  it  possible,  if  a  good  God  is  in 
the  universe  or  rules  the  universe,  that  he  should  permit  so 
much  suffering  ? 

Now,  as  a  preliminary  step  to  such  brief  consideration  of 
this  great  theme  as  I  shall  have  time  for  this  morning,  I 
wish  to  eliminate  from  the  problem  two  things.  In  the 
first  place  let  us  get  rid  of  the  exaggeration  that  I  believe  is 
in  the  minds  of  most  people  in  regard  to  the  amount  of 
suffering  which  exists. 

Do  not  for  a  moment  suppose  that  I  would  take  any  posi- 
tion or  suggest  any  thought  that  would  harden  any  man's 
heart  or  make  him  less  tender  towards  the  sufferings  of  the 
world ;  but,  if  we  are  going  to  bring  an  indictment  against 
the  government  of  the  universe,  let  us  do  the  best  we  can  to 
have  it  a  true  indictment,  not  an  exaggerated  one. 


Standing  Ground  for  Trust  105 

I  wish,  therefore,  to  suggest  to  you  that  I  believe  with  my 
whole  soul  that  there  is  not  anything  like  the  quantity  of 
suffering  in  this  world  that  thousands  and  thousands  of  sen- 
sitive people  have  come  to  believe  there  is. 

One  of  the  characteristics  of  this  modern  world  is  almost, 
a  morbid  sensitiveness  to  suffering.  In  the  first  place  look 
upon  the  beasts  of  the  field,  the  animals  of  the  forests., 
and  the  fishes  of  the  sea.  Take  the  whole  lower  life  of^ 
the  world,  and  in  spite  of  the  stories  of  pursuit  and  slaying- 
and  blood  that  we  imagine,  as  we  study  it,  it  is  almost  en- 
tirely a  scene  of  limitless  joy,  delight  in  being. 

If  I  had  time  this  morning  to  go  into  detail,  I  could  show 
you,  I  think,  in  the  case  of  the  pursuit  of  one  animal  by 
another,  and  the  violent  death  that  follows,  that  there 
is  almost  no  pain  in  it  at  all.  Livingstone  tells  us  that 
once,  in  Africa,  he  was  pursued  and  struck  down  by  a  lion ; 
and  the  minute  the  lion's  paw  was  upon  him  he  was,  as  it 
were,  hypnotized, —  no  suffering,  no  pain, —  simply  looking 
up  at  the  ferocious  monster  and  wondering  what  was  going 
to  happen  next. 

Scientific  men  will  tell  you  that  in  the  lower  life  of  the 
world  there  is  not  the  nervous  susceptibility  to  pain  that 
there  is  on  the  part  of  its  highly  and  sensitively  developed 
men  and  women. 

Then  take  the  barbarous  races,  the  wild  Indians  of  the 
plains.  It  would  be  a  horrible  thing  for  one  of  us  to  go  and 
be  compelled  to  live  as  they  do  or  as  the  wild  men  of  Cen- 
tral Africa  live.  But  it  is  not  a  horrible  thing  from  their 
point  of  view :  they  are  having  a  very  good  time  indeed ; 
and  we  simply  exaggerate  unnecessarily  the  problem  of  pain 
when  we  suppose  them  to  be  feeling  about  it  as  we  should  if 
we  were  now  thrust  down  to  their  place.     They  have  come 


I06  Religion  for  To-day 

to  this  low  level,  not  by  being  hurled  down  to  it  from  above, 
but  by  climbing  up  to  it  from  underneath. 

If  a  man  is  living  on  five  thousand  dollars  a  year,  and 
you  reduce  it  to  four  thousand,  he  is  the  poorest  man  in  the 
city.  If  he  is  living  on  five  hundred,  and  you  increase  his 
income  to  six  hundred  a  year,  he  is  rich. 

All  this  shows  us,  then,  that  these  barbarous  people  who 
have  climbed  up  from  a  lower  level  to  a  higher  do  not  go 
through  the  suffering  we  should  if  we  were  to  take  their 
places.  They  are  on  the  up  grade :  we  should  be  on  the 
down  grade. 

Let  me  suggest,  merely  as  another  point  for  you  to  con- 
sider, that  in  your  own  cases  —  those  of  you  who  think  you 
have  the  hardest  time  in  the  world  —  you  have  not  been  one- 
half  as  miserable  as  you  like  to  believe.  There  gets  to  be 
a  sort  of  satisfaction  in  being  the  most  miserable  person 
in  the  world,  if  we  cannot  be  distinguished  in  any  other 
way.  You  will  find  people  looking  over  their  lives,  and 
complaining,  forgetting  to  look  at  the  bright  days,  the  sun- 
shiny days,  until  their  whole  heaven  is  one  mass  of  cloud. 
But  it  is  false.  I  have  had  my  share  of  suffering.  I  do 
not  believe  that  there  are  many  of  you  here  to-day  who 
have  had  much  more, —  there  may  be  some ;  but  I  know, 
if  I  should  take  the  dark  and  sad  days  of  my  life  and  put 
them  in  one  place,  and  the  bright  days  and  put  them  in 
another,  the  darkness  would  be  no  more  than  as  a  spot  on 
the  sun. 

We  easily  forget  a  week  of  bright,  sunshiny  weather  ;  but 
we  are  very  likely  to  grumble  if  it  rains,  and  we  are  caught 
without  an  umbrella.  Let  us  not  exaggerate,  then,  the 
amount  of  the  world's  suffering. 

There  is,  too,  another  class  of  suffering  that  I  wish  you 


Standing  Ground  for  Trust  107 

to  leave  out  of  the  account,  because  you  have  no  right  to 
bring  it  against  God  as  an  impeachment  of  his  government 
of  the  universe ;  and  that  is  the  needless  suffering,  the  suf- 
fering that  we  passionately,  purposely,  wilfully  inflict  on 
each  other.  And  how  large  a  part  is  this  !  How  much  of 
the  world's  suffering  is  made  up  in  this  way ! 

Leave  out  of  account,  then,  the  imagined  sufferings  of 
the  world  and  the  sufferings  we  ourselves  cause,  and  then 
you  have  left  simply  the  necessary  pain,  that  pain  which  we 
may  reasonably  regard  as  a  part  of  the  divine  order  and 
plan.     Now  what  about  that  ? 

In  the  first  place,  if  you  stop  and  think  of  it  one  moment, 
you  will  see  that  it  is  an  absurdity,  an  impossibility,  to  im- 
agine the  existence  of  a  being  who  can  feel  the  sensation  of 
pleasure  who  cannot  also  equally  feel  the  sensation  of 
pain.  Sensitiveness  must  be  sensitiveness  in  both  direc- 
tions. There  can  be  no  possibility  of  pleasure,  then,  with- 
out the  possibility  of  pain. 

Then,  in  the  next  place,  suppose  that  the  world  —  that  is, 
the  whole  human  race  —  had  been  perfectly,  blissfully  happy 
from  the  first  moment  of  the  world's  creation  until  now.  It 
never  would  have  known  it.  If  the  world  were  all  one  color, 
it  would  be  as  though  it  were  no  color :  we  should  be  prac- 
tically blind.  The  only  way  we  can  see  things  is  by  defini- 
tion, separation,  distinction, —  separating  things  from  each 
other.  If  they  were  all  alike,  it  would  be  as  though  we 
could  not  see  at  all. 

So,  if  we  had  never  known  anything  of  pain,  we  never 
should  know  we  were  happy.  Happiness  would  be  abso- 
lutely without  meaning.  That  is  a  scientific  truth  for  you 
to  keep  hold  of,  if  you  can,  when  you  are  discussing  the 
difficulties  of  this  problem. 


Io8  Religion  for  To-day 

In  the  third  place  consider  another  poinL  If  you  could 
conceive  as  living  here  on  this  planet  a  race  of  creatures, 
no  matter  what  their  grade,  from  the  lowest  up  to  man, 
which  was  incapable  of  feeling  pain,  you  would  be  dealing 
with  a  race  that  would  not  continue  in  existence  for  six 
months. 

Suppose  nre  did  not  hun ;  suppose  a  blow  did  not  hurt, 
a  stioke  of  an  axe  did  not  hurt  falling  off  a  precipice  did 
not  hurt;  suppose  nothing  hurt.  Why,  we  should  be 
bioken  to  pieces  and  ground  to  powder  inside  of  six  months, 
tbe  whole  o€  os.  Pain  is  simply  God's  danger  signal  set  up, 
telling  us  to  keep  away  from  that  which  threatens  us  with 
liarm, —  that  is  alL 

So  the  necessary  pain  of  the  universe,  that  which  we 
have  any  right  to  bring  as  an  indictment  against  the  govern- 
ment of  this  universe,  it  is  clearly  to  be  demonstrated,  is 
cofy  and  ahvajs  beneficent  There  is  nothing  in  human  life 
that  is  more  clearly  a  token  of  the  fact  that  "  God  is  good 
to  all,  and  his  tender  mercies  are  over  all  his  works,"  than  is 
just  this  existence  of  pain,  which  we  so  frequently  and  so 
foolishly  bring  as  an  indictment  against  the  government  of 
this  worid. 

Let  ns  come  now  for  a  moment  to  consider  the  next  of 
*l^  these  great  indictments,  the  existence  of  moral  evil.  Right 
here,  friends,  I  am  going  to  take  a  position  that  may  sur- 
prise you  a  little.  I  ask  you  to  look  over  the  world,  and  see 
if  I  am  not  correct  about  it.  We  have  been  taught  by  the 
tiieokjgj  in  which  we  were  trained  —  I  have  —  to  think  of 
the  wodd  as  bsui,  totally  defHaved  and  vile.  We  have  been 
tai^;ht  that  God  likes  to  have  tis  humble  ourselves  in  the 
dust,  and  talk  about  what  poor,  miserable,  sinful  worms  we 
are.     We  go  into  the  churches,  and  declare,  in  the  words  of 


Standing  Ground  for  Trust  1 09 

the  Prayer  Book,  that  "we  have  done  the  things  we  ought 
not  to  have  done  and  have  not  done  the  things  we  ought  to 
have  done,  and  there  is  no  health  in  us,"  —  when,  if  a  single 
one  of  our  neighbors  looked  us  in  the  face  and  made  that 
statement,  we  would  not  speak  to  him  afterwards.  You 
don't  believe  a  word  of  it ! 

We  have  been  taught  to  look  upon  human  natiure  as 
something  vile.  One  of  the  grandest  points  in  the  new 
gospel  which  is  being  preached  in  this  regenerate  nine- 
teenth century  is  the  precise  opposite  of  that :  man  is  not 
vile.  There  is  infinitely  more  good  in  this  city  of  New 
York  than  there  is  evil.  If  the  evil  in  this  city  were  in  the 
majority,  there  would  be  no  city.  It  is  as  absolutely  certain 
as  the  multiplication  table. 

For  what  do  we  mean  by  evil  ?  Evil  is  that  which  hurts, 
which  injures,  which  tears  to  pieces,  which  disintegrates. 
Evil  is  that  which  separates  between  man  and  man.  The 
simple  fact,  then,  that  there  is  such  a  thing  as  society,  that 
people  exist  together  on  terms  of  friendliness  and  coHDpera- 
tion  and  mutual  help,  proves  that  the  disintegrating  forces 
are  in  the  minority. 

Our  newspapers,  without  intending  it,  are  responsible  for 
a  great  deal  of  the  pessimism  of  the  present  time. 

Consider  a  moment.  A  man  committed  a  burglary  last 
night;  the  cashier  of  a  bank  defaulted  yesterday;  in  some 
back  alley  a  man  struck  his  wife  or  perhaps  one  of  his 
children ;  and  what  is  the  result  ?  The  whole  thing,  illus- 
trated in  all  its  nauseous  details,  is  spread  before  us  on  om- 
bre akfast  table ;  and  people  read  and  look  up,  and  say, 
"WTiom  can  we  trust?"  —  as  if  they  expected  the  next  man 
they  met  to  be  a  burglar  or  a  defaulter  or  to  be  abusing  his 
wife  or  children. 


no  Religion  for  To-day 

As  matter  of  fact,  however,  the  percentage  of  the  people 
in  New  York  who  are  doing  any  of  these  things  is  practi- 
cally infinitesimal.  Note  the  significance  of  this  statement, 
—  behaving  one's  self  is  not  news/  The  newspapers  are 
looking  after  sensations.  Thousands  of  people  yesterday 
behaved  themselves ;  but  nobody  thought  of  reporting  it. 
The  great  majority  of  people  yesterday  went  about  their 
business,  patiently  doing  their  work.  Men  with  thousands 
of  dollars  that  they  might  have  stolen,  and  they  never  took 
a  penny  ;  men  who  needed  it ;  men  who  could  not  pay  their 
debts;  men  whose  wives  needed  clothing,  whose  children 
wanted  bread, —  they  had  opportunities  to  steal ;  and  they 
never  took  one  cent.  Men  and  women  thrown  together  in 
all  sorts  of  relations,  tempted  in  every  conceivable  way ;  and 
yet,  out  of  the  three  and  a  half  millions  of  Greater  New 
York,  hardly  enough  persons  to  be  worth  speaking  of  com- 
mitted a  crime  yesterday. 

That  is  the  clear,  cold,  simple  fact  of  the  statistics. 

Men  are  not  half  so  bad,  then,  as  we  give  them  credit  for 
being.  I  have  been  over  this  world  a  good  deal  in  my 
time.  I  think  I  know  what  is  taking  place  in  it  from  the 
top  to  the  bottom  of  society;  and,  the  older  I  get,  the 
greater,  the  grander  is  my  trust  in  men  and  women,  the 
greater  grows  my  wonder,  not  that  they  sometimes  go 
astray,  but  that  they  do  not  go  astray  more  frequently  than 
they  do.  I  have  a  great  loving  belief  in  the  essential  good- 
ness of  men  and  women  ;  and  it  is  justified  by  fact. 

Remember,  then,  that  we  have  not  got  such  a  tremendous 
problem  on  our  hands  as  we  sometimes  imagine,  in  the  pes- 
simism of  the  time  and  in  the  light  of  the  old  theology 
When  we  come  to  deal  with  this  problem  of  evil,  we  must 
turn  it  around.     The  old  philosophy  dealt  with  the  origin  of 


Standing  Ground  for  Trust  ill 

evil :  we  start,  in  the  light  of  the  evolution  of  the  universe, 
with  the  origin  of  goodness. 

Consider  first  a  world  alive  with  animals  and  birds,  strug- 
gling, fighting,  killing, —  all  these  things  here,  but  no  moral 
evil  yet.  Why  ?  Because  there  is  no  conscience,  no  intelli- 
gence that  perceives  the  distinction  between  good  and  evil. 
When  the  conscience  is  born  at  last,  it  is  out  of  an  unmoral 
universe  that  comes  a  moral  race  of  beings  ;  it  is  good  that 
is  born,  not  evil ;  it  is  the  distinction  between  right  and 
wrong.  And  from  that  far-off  day  to  this  men  and  women 
have  been  climbing  up  out  of  the  animal  and  towards  the 
angel,  have  been  sloughing  off  the  characteristics  of  the 
tiger,  the  bear,  the  snake,  all  the  evil  of  the  outgrown  life, 
and  climbing  up  into  tenderness  and  goodness  and  pity  and 
human  help, —  all  that  is  divine. 

The  problem,  then,  is  not  as  to  how  evil  came  into  the 
world  or  how  to  account  for  it.  Remember  that  this  expe- 
rience with  what  we  call  evil  is  absolutely  necessary  to  the 
culture  and  development  of  a  moral  being.  There  could  be 
no  noble  men  and  women  to  graduate  from  this  school  of 
earth  if  it  were  not  for  this  contest  with  the  lower  in  our 
natures  and  the  struggle  against  the  seductiveness  of  the  evil 
outside  of  us  and  around  us. 

It  is  out  of  this  fight  with  the  evil  of  the  world,  as  we  call 
it,  that  the  sweetest  and  noblest  and  best  things  are  born. 

The  next  great  count  against  the  universe  is  that  life  is  so 
unsatisfactory.  Wordsworth  draws  a  very  beautiful  but  senti- 
mental picture  of  the  child  born  with  all  heaven  around  it  in 
its  infancy,  and  of  how  the  world  grows  very  commonplace 
as  he  gets  into  middle  life,  under  the  hard  sky,  and  his  feet 
tramp  the  dusty  ways  of  the  world.  But  I  tell  you,  friends, 
it  is  only  as  you  lose  your  higher  faculty  of  vision,  your  own 


112  Religion  for  To-day 

finer  ideals,  that  you  listen  to  the  stories  that  tell  you  of 
only  the  harder  and  worse  side  of  things. 

The  man  who  sees  no  more  poetry  in  the  world  is  not  the 
one  who  has  discovered  the  real  secret  of  life :  he  is  the  one 
who  has  lost  it,  and  so  says  nothing  is  there.  The  man  who 
loses  the  ideal  and  beauty  out  of  his  married  life  is  not  the 
man  who  has  sounded  the  world,  and  found  it  hollow :  he  is 
the  man  whose  own  capacity  for  finding  sweet  things  has 
become  blunted  or  weakened.     They  are  all  there. 

So  this  fact  that  we  cannot  find  complete  satisfaction 
in  this  world, —  that  we  are  all  Alexanders  crying  for  more 
worlds  to  conquer ;  that  no  one  can  get  rich  enough,  no  one 
can  get  famous  enough,  no  one  can  get  good  enough,  or 
attain  anything  he  wants  to  completely  or  become  anything 
he  wants  to  completely, —  this  fact,  instead  of  being  an 
indictment  against  life,  is  one  of  its  grandest  qualities  and 
characteristics. 

Suppose  this  world  could  feed  us  and  bestow  upon  us  all 
we  desired  :  would  it  not  prove  that  there  was  nothing  in 
us  fitting  us  for  anything  finer  and  greater  beyond  this 
world  ?  If  a  man  puts  a  plant  into  a  flower-pot  and  stands 
it  on  a  shelf  in  his  hot-house,  and  then  the  plant  develops 
so  that  it  breaks  the  pot  that  encloses  it,  and  it  demands 
that  even  the  roof  be  lifted  so  it  can  get  outdoors,  he  has 
discovered  that  his  plant  was  adapted  for  something  larger 
and  grander  than  his  little  hot-house,  however  beautiful  and 
fine  it  may  have  been. 

So,  when  you  find  a  creature, —  call  him  commonplace,  if 
you  will, —  a  man  who  finds  this  world  not  big  enough  to 
satisfy  him,  who  demands  more  room,  who  asks  to  be  set 
free,  who  wants  to  know  more  than  this  earth  can  teach 
him,  who  w^ants  to  become  greater  than  the  possibility  of 


Standing  Ground  for  Trust  113 

being  here,  is  not  the  inference,  whether  you  expect  it  or 
not,  that  you  are  deaUng  with  a  sort  of  nature  that  may 
have  in  it  the  necessity  of  demanding  a  higher  and  larger 
place  for  its  perfect  unfolding?  That,  at  any  rate,  is  the 
way  I  read  a  suggestion  like  this. 

Now  let  us  come  to  the  great  fact  of  death.  Is  that  an 
adequate  impeachment  of  the  wisdom  or  goodness  of  God  .-* 

Right  here  let  me  say,  as  I  did  of  pain  and  of  evil,  that 
there  are  any  number  of  things  that  we  associate  with 
death  that  do  not  necessarily  belong  there  at  all :  they  are 
no  part  of  the  great  fact  of  passing  out  of  this  world  into 
what  I  believe  to  be  another. 

Consider  in  the  first  place  that  a  large  part  of  the  horror 
that  we  associate  with  the  word  "  death "  is  born  of  the 
superstitious  religion,  the  hideous  theology,  that  we  have  in- 
herited from  our  barbarous  ancestors.  They  are  no  part 
of  the  fact  of  dying  at  all.  They  are  the  imagined  terrors 
that  men  fear  may  follow  after  death,  those  things  which  in 
Hamlet's  famous  soliloquy  gave  him  "pause." 

Then  we  associate  with  death  the  pains  of  disease.  But 
this  is  what  we  suffer  all  our  lives  long,  and  which  comes  — 
nine-tenths  of  it  —  from  the  breaking  of  laws  that  we  have  no 
need  to  break.  We  associate  this  needless  pain  with  dying. 
Besides,  I  have  found  hundreds  of  persons  who  have 
been  accustomed  to  attach  to  this  one  experience  all  sorts 
of  imaginary  horrors.  They  talked  as  though  they  were 
going  to  be  buried ;  and  they  shrank  from  the  thought  of  a 
grave.     The  grave  should  have  no  terrors  for  any  one. 

You  remember,  when  Socrates's  disciples  asked  him  what 
they  should  do  with  him  after  he  drank  the  hemlock,  he 
said  humorously,  "  You  may  do  whatever  you  please  with 
me,  if  you  can  catch  me."  He  did  not  expect  to  be  there; 
he  did  not  expect  to  be  buried. 


114  Religion  for  To-day 

The  dread  in  the  minds  of  many  people  is  as  if  they  were 
going  to  be  buried.  But  these  are  imaginary  horrors  we 
associate  with  death.  Let  us  leave  them  one  side.  Death 
stripped  of  these  unreal  terrors  is  merely  a  passage,  at 
the  worst,  from  this  world  to  sleep ;  at  the  best,  from  this 
world  to  another  and  grander  world. 

Now  let  us  look  at  death  with  this  thought  simply  in 
mind.  What  are  the  alternatives  to  dying  ?  If  God  would 
confer  upon  me  the  gift  of  immortality,  and  not  give  it  to  my 
friends,  do  you  suppose  I  would  take  it  ?  It  seems  to  me 
it  would  be  simply  horrible  to  live  here  year  after  year, 
century  after  century,  with  those  I  had  learned  to  love  and 
care  for  somewhere  else.  I  can  imagine  that  I  might  even 
frantically  knock  at  the  door,  and  beg  if  I  might  be  let 
through  to  see  if  I  could  find  some  of  those  who  had  gone 
before. 

Suppose  God  should  confer  an  earthly  immortality  on 
everybody :  what  would  happen  ?  Why,  it  would  not  take 
a  great  while  for  the  world  to  be  packed  full.  There  would 
be  just  as  many  people  here  as  the  earth  could  possibly 
maintain.  Then  what  ?  No  more  childhood  !  That  alone 
would  be  enough  to  make  me  want  to  die,  and  wish  that 
I  might  go  to  some  place  where  they  had  some  children. 
All  grown-up  people,  looking  in  each  other's  faces  for  thou- 
sands of  years !  I  fancy  we  should  be  tired  to  death  of 
it,  or  wish  we  might  be  "  tired  to  death."  We  should  learn 
all  that  the  world  had  to  teach  us  after  a  while,  we  should 
explore  every  continent  and  every  sea ;  and  the  world  would 
become  to  us  like  an  open  book.  Should  we  not  long  to 
see  if  there  was  anything  else  in  the  universe?  It  seems 
to  me  that  at  night  we  should  look  at  those  radiant  spheres 
that  swing  and  sing  above  us,  and  long  with  the  longing  of 


Standiftg  Ground  for  Trust  115 

heartache  and  tears  to  launch  off  into  space,  to  get  free  of 
this  cramped  and  crowded  earth,  and  find  out  if  there  were 
not  something  else,  something  grander,  something  better. 

This  dreaded  death,  when  we  have  stripped  it  of  the 
things  that  do  not  belong  to  it  as  a  part  of  God's  ordaining, 
is  simply  the  divine  gate-opener  to  let  us  out,  to  help  us 
escape  from  the  prison-house  of  one  little  planet,  and  give 
us  the  freedom,  the  citizenship,  of  the  universe.  Death  is 
not  something  to  be  apologized  for.  I  believe  it  to  be  one 
of  the  divinest,  noblest,  sweetest,  grandest  gifts  of  the 
Father  to  his  children. 

There  is  only  one  thing  left  about  death  that  ever 
troubles  me  in  the  slightest  degree ;  and  that  is  the  tem- 
porary separation  from  those  I  love.  I  have  no  fear  of  it : 
I  do  not  expect  to  suffer  any.  In  ninety-nine  cases  in  a 
hundred,  death  is  only  sleep ;  and  the  person  passing 
through  the  experience  knows  no  more  of  it  than  you  can 
tell  me  the  exact  moment  when  you  lost  consciousness  last 
night.  We  look  on,  and  see  the  muscular  and  nervous 
movements,  and  imagine  suffering  of  which  the  person 
himself  is  not  at  all  conscious. 

I  believe,  then,  that  death  is  one  of  the  very  best  of 
God's  gifts  to  men.  Surely,  friends,  if  I  believe  that  it  is 
only  an  experience  through  which  we  pass  out  into  a  larger 
and  grander  life,  then  it  does  not  need  to  be  apologized  for. 
And,  if  there  is  anybody  that  challenges  me  to  prove  that 
death  is  a  good,  I  will  turn,  and  say  that  it  is  a  good,  and 
that  he  has  no  right  to  impeach  it  until  he  can  prove  to  me, 
—  what  nobody  can  prove, —  that  it  is  the  end. 

I  believe,  then,  that,  rightly  considered,  neither  pain  nor 
moral  evil,  nor  dissatisfaction  with  life,  nor  even  death  itself, 
has  anything  to  say  against  the  magnificent  assertion  of  the 


1 1 6  Religion  for  To-day 

old  Hebrew  singer, —  "The  Lord  is  good  to  all,  and  his 
tender  mercies  are  over  all  his  works." 

I  must  ask  you  now,  as  hurriedly  as  possible,  to  think  of 
one  thing  more.  I  have  studied  it  for  years.  Recognizing 
the  difficulties  connected  with  the  present  world,  I  have 
been  trying  to  think  out  a  better  one ;  and  I  cannot  do  it. 
Will  some  of  you  help  me  ?  What  kinds  of  worlds  can  we 
imagine  ?  We  might  imagine  a  world  in  which  there  was  no 
feeling  at  all, —  but  of  course  we  should  not  be  there,  —  so 
we  pass  that  by. 

We  might  imagine  a  world  in  which  the  inhabitants 
should  be  automatons,  bits  of  curious  mechanism.  God 
might  make  us  as  a  Frenchman  makes  a  mechanical  toy, — 
wind  us  up,  so  that  we  should  go  accurately.  But  all 
growth,  all  study,  all  achievement,  all  advance,  all  doing 
anything  or  becoming  anything,  would  have  to  be  left  out. 
Would  you  be  willing  to  exchange  the  present  world  for 
that  ?     I  would  not. 

We  might  imagine  that  God  could  create  a  world  in 
which  all  the  people  would  be  perfectly  wise  and  perfectly 
good,  so  that  they  should  never  make  a  mistake  and  never 
do  wrong.  But  that,  on  the  face  of  it,  is  an  absurdity,  an 
impossibility. 

We  fool  ourselves  sometimes  in  discussing  these  great 
questions,  by  thinking  that  God  can  do  everything  that  we 
happen  to  imagine  simply  because  he  is  almighty.  Do  you 
never  stop  to  think  that  there  are  limits  to  almightiness  ? 
Almighty  power  could  not  have  two  and  two  make  five. 
Almighty  power  could  not  make  two  mountains  without  a 
valley  between  them. 

There  are  some  things  that  are  impossible  because  they 
are  absurd. 


Standing  Ground  for  Trust  117 

Now  consider  a  moment.  What  do  we  mean  by  knowl- 
edge ?  The  only  meaning  it  has  or  can  have,  we  being 
constituted  as  we  are,  is  this :  the  summed  up  results  of 
human  experience  in  the  intellectual  realm.  So  God  himself 
cannot  create  knowledge  except  through  the  process  of  ex- 
perience by  which  it  is  arrived  at. 

God  cannot  make  people,  then,  perfectly  wise  in  a  minute. 
It  is  a  contradiction  in  terms.  Can  he  make  them  perfectly 
good  in  a  minute  ?  What  do  we  mean  by  goodness,  by 
morality,  by  virtue.-*  We  mean  the  summed  up  results  of 
human  experience,  striving  against  and  putting  evil  under 
our  feet.  Morality,  virtue,  goodness,  have  no  meaning 
apart  from  this  struggle  of  ours  in  conquering  evil. 

So  this  theory  of  the  universe  is  an  impossibility  and  an 
absurdity. 

What  next  ?  We  can  imagine  that  life  might  be  a  scene 
of  perpetually  repeated  miracles, —  that  every  little  child 
from  the  time  it  began  to  walk  should  be  watched  over  by 
an  angel ;  that,  if  it  stubbed  its  toe,  the  angel  should  snatch 
it,  and  hold  it  up  on  its  feet.  And,  then,  you  might  think  of 
moral  falls  guarded  against  in  the  same  way.  Every  time  a 
person  was  going  to  do  wrong  an  angel  should  interpose 
and  prevent  it. 

We  could  imagine  a  world  like  that ;  but  think  of  it ! 
Anything  like  the  natural  development  of  anybody  would 
be  impossible.  There  would  be  no  knowing  anything  in 
a  world  like  that.  You  would  never  know  what  was  going 
to  happen  next.  Intellectually,  men  and  women  would  be 
only  babies  in  a  nursery,  watched  over  so  that  it  would 
be  impossible  for  them  to  experience  and  so  learn  anything. 
Anything  like  moral  development  would  be  out  of  the  ques- 
tion in  a  world  where  people  were  shielded  and  guarded 


1 1 8  Religio7i  for  To-day 

like  that.  It  would  be  a  perpetual  nursery  or  a  mad-house : 
men  and  women  would  be  grown-up  children  or  imbeciles. 

Now  the  only  other  kind  of  world  I  can  think  of  is  that 
which  we  are  living  in, —  where  men  and  women  begin  by 
making  mistakes,  then  correcting  their  mistakes  and  leav- 
ing them  behind;  where  people  start  morally  feeble,  and 
learn  the  distinction  between  right  and  wrong  by  trying 
them,  and  learn  that  right  is  best  by  trying  it.  So  they  be- 
come tender-hearted  and  true.  They  learn  that  it  is  best  to 
keep  God's  laws ;  and  in  such  keeping  is  the  happiness  and 
welfare  of  the  world.  Thus  the  sad  song  of  pain  and  igno- 
rance and  evil  that  has  been  chanted  by  a  wandering  and 
sinning  world  so  long  shall  at  last  sink  out  of  hearing,  and 
become  only  a  memory. 

I  believe,  then,  that,  if  we  look  the  problem  squarely  in 
the  face,  and  try  to  deal  with  the  facts  as  they  are,  we  shall 
conclude  that  this  is  the  best  kind  of  a  world  of  which  we 
are  capable  of  dreaming.  If  it  is  simply  a  world  in  which  we 
are  at  school,  learning  how  to  live  ;  if  we  are  doing  the  only 
thing  which  Browning  says  is  worth  doing, —  that  is,  cultivat- 
ing and  developing  a  soul ;  if  the  end  and  aim  of  this  life  is 
learning  to  be  men  and  women,  so  that,  when  death  comes, 
we  are  only  graduating  into  a  fitness  for  another  higher  field 
of  experience,  of  life,  of  labor,  of  hope,  of  joy, —  then  I  cannot 
conceive  a  better  school  than  the  one  we  are  really  in. 

Let  us  learn,  therefore,  that  the  best  thing  we  can  do  is 
not  to  increase  the  sum  of  animal  or  human  pain,  not  to  add 
to  the  amount  of  injury  and  wrong,  but  see  to  it  that  we  do 
what  we  can,  in  living  nobly  and  truly  ourselves,  to  help 
others  to  live  nobly  and  truly.  Then  we  shall  find  that  the 
darkness  of  the  problem  shall  grow  lighter,  and  that  cheer 
and  hope  shall  lead  on  and  animate  the  hearts  of  the  world. 


MAN    NOT    FALLEN,    BUT    RISING. 


The  doctrine  of  the  fall  of  man  in  Adam,  his  having  been 
originally  created  perfect  and  having  lost  the  divine  likeness 
by  voluntary  transgression,  is  the  corner-stone,  the  main 
foundation,  of  all  the  historic  churches  of  Christendom, — 
Catholic,  Greek,  Protestant. 

In  other  words,  if  you  will  think  the  matter  out  with  clear- 
ness, you  will  see  that  all  the  other  chief  doctrines  are  de- 
pendent on  this.  So  true  is  this  that,  if  men  had  never 
believed  in  any  fall,  the  other  essentials  of  the  historic 
creeds  would  probably  never  have  come  into  existence. 

It  is,  then,  of  the  first  importance  for  us,  in  the  light 
of  our  modern  knowledge,  reverently,  earnestly,  clearly,  to 
examine  this  foundation  stone,  and  see  whether  it  is  secure. 

At  the  very  outset,  it  is  most  interesting  and  of  great  im- 
portance for  us  to  notice  that  the  Hebrews  are  not  the  only 
ones  who  have  traditions  of  an  earlier  condition  of  humanity 
that  is  better  than  that  which  followed  it.  We  find  not  only 
the  one  tradition  in  other  nations  than  the  Jewish,  but  we 
find,  curiously  enough,  both  among  the  Jews  and  among 
other  peoples,  parallel  and  contradictory  traditions,  showing, 
as  we  shall  see  in  a  moment,  that  there  are  two  types  of 
human  mind, —  one  the  backward-looking,  the  other  the 
forward-looking, —  and  that  they  both  have  had  their  repre- 
sentatives in  every  age. 

I  wish,  to  make  this  matter  clear,  to  call  your  brief  atten- 


I20  Religion  for  To-day 

tion  to  the  parallel  traditions,  to  which  I  have  referred,  as 
they  appear  among  the  Greeks  and  the  Romans. 

In  the  first  place  there  is  the  Prometheus  myth.  Accord- 
ing to  this,  men  began  their  history  on  this  earth  in  the  most 
helpless,  weak,  ignorant,  abject  condition.  They  were  with- 
out fire,  without  any  of  the  means  by  which  they  might 
create  around  themselves  a  condition  approaching  civiliza- 
tion. They  were  despised  and  hated  by  the  Olympian  gods. 
Zeus  looks  upon  them  with  contempt,  and,  it  was  thought, 
also  with  antagonism.  Prometheus,  the  old  Titan,  perhaps 
having  something  more  of  a  feeling  of  kinship  with  these 
abject  and  despised  creatures  than  the  deities  who  sat  on 
the  cloudless  summits  of  Olympus,  steals  the  celestial  fire, 
and  brings  it  down  in  a  reed,  and  makes  a  gift  of  it  to  men. 
Thus  he  confers  upon  them  the  possibility  of  advance, 
growth,  civilization.  But  the  god  who  had  hated  humanity 
is  angry ;  and  he  chains  the  old  Titan  on  the  rocks  in  the 
Caucasus,  where  he  lies,  age  after  age,  while  the  eagles 
devour  his  vitals  during  the  daytime,  which  grow  again,  to 
be  consumed  once  more,  during  the  following  night. 

Here  is  the  Prometheus  myth  in  outline.  The  point  I  wish 
you  to  notice  is,  that  among  the  ancient  classical  people 
there  was  a  belief  concerning  the  original  condition  of  this 
world  of  ours  which  falls  in  remarkably  with  the  modern 
science  of  evolution.  This  story  teaches  that  men  began 
away  down  close  on  the  borders  of  the  animal  world ;  and  it 
places  the  golden  age  in  the  future,  as  something  to  be  at- 
tained, not  something  away  from  which  the  race  has  fallen. 

On  the  other  hand,  having  found  its  completest  develop- 
ment among  the  Latin  races,  you  will  find  the  Saturnian 
myth.  According  to  this  the  earlier  condition  of  the  world 
was  its  golden  age.     The  god  Saturn,  father  of  the  rest  of 


Man  not  Fallen^  but  Rising  12 1 

the  gods  as  well  as  of  men,  lived  on  the  earth  among  his 
blessed  and  happy  children,  men  and  women.  There  was 
no  death,  no  sickness,  no  pain,  no  hatred,  no  wars,  no  evils 
of  any  kind.  This  was  the  blessed  condition  of  things  that 
was  dreamed  of  as  having  existed  at  the  beginning  of: 
human  history.  But  evil  times  came  upon  them.  Saturn, 
departed;  could  no  more  bear  or  countenance  the  conduct,, 
the  evils,  the  sins  and  the  wrongs  of  his  children. 

Then  came  the  age  of  brass.  This  was  followed  by  the^ 
age  of  iron.  And  so  the  poor  old  world,  according  to  this, 
theory,  has  been  on  the  down  grade  from  the  beginning,, 
getting  worse  and  worse  age  after  age. 

Here  you  see  are  these  two  parallel  and  yet  contradictory- 
traditions.  Before  commenting  upon  them,  I  wish  to  call 
your  attention  to  the  fact  that  precisely  such  parallel  and 
contradictory  traditions  are  found  in  the  Old  Testament. 

If  the  books  of  the  Old  Testament  were  printed  in  the 
chronological  order  in  which  they  were  written,  the  earliest 
one  would  be  the  Prophet  Amos.  The  prophetic  books 
would  go  before  the  Pentateuch,  then  those  we  call  histor- 
ical, like  Samuel,  Kings,  and  Chronicles.  The  older  prophets 
take  us  back  to  a  period  about  eight  hundred  years  before 
the  birth  of  Jesus. 

Now  I  wish  you  to  take  notice  that  in  the  prophets  this  is, 
without  exception,  true :  in  the  prophets,  the  earliest 
writers  of  the  Hebrew  people,  there  is  no  fall  of  man. 
There  is  no  reference  to  the  doctrine  anywhere  among  them. 
They  make  no  comment  on  it  whatever.  So  far  as  any 
word  of  theirs  is  concerned,  they  have  never  heard  of  it. 
An  apparent  exception  may  be  found  in  Ezekiel,  who  lived 
during  the  captivity.  He  refers  to  Eden  in  a  poetical  way 
as  being  a  beautiful  garden. 


122  Religion  for  To-day 

According  to  the  prophets,  then,  there  never  was  any  fall 
of  man.  He  began  in  a  condition  of  weakness  and 
ignorance ;  and  the  golden  age,  the  period  of  the  Messianic 
hope,  is  with  them  always  in  the  future.  They  look  for- 
ward to  the  coming  of  this  Messianic  period,  when  men 
shall  have  outgrown  the  evils  of  the  past,  and  have  come 
up  into  the  likeness  of  the  Divine. 

But  along  with  that  tradition  we  find  this  story  of  Eden, 
Adam  and  Eve,  the  forbidden  tree,  its  eating,  the  serpent, 
the  being  cast  out,  and  all  the  train  of  evils  that  are  sup- 
posed to  have  followed. 

Now  where  did  this  come  from  ?  For  I  wish  you  to  note, 
as  it  is  of  great  importance,  that  it  was  not  an  original  tradi- 
tion of  the  Jewish  race  at  all.  It  was  never  heard  of  on 
the  part  of  the  Hebrew  people  until  they  came  in  contact 
with  the  Babylonians  and  the  Persians  during  the  times  of 
their  captivity. 

It  is  an  old  pagan  myth  borrowed  by  the  Hebrews,  at 
least  six,  perhaps  eight,  hundred  years  after  the  time  of 
Moses,  no  part  of  the  original  story,  something  that  came 
later,  observe,  into  the  life  of  the  Hebrew  people,  not  earlier 
than  five  or  six  hundred  years  before  the  birth  of  Chris- 
tianity. 

Here,  then,  you  see  are  these  two  parallel  and  contradic- 
tory stories  among  the  Hebrews,  as  we  find  them  among  the 
classical  peoples. 

And  now  I  wish  you  to  note  that  these  parallel  and  con- 
tradictory traditions  represent  two  states  of  mind  on  the 
part  of  humanity.  You  find  them  in  every  age.  There  are 
to-day  certain  people  who  are  always  looking  back.  They 
talk  of  the  good  old  times  when  they  were  boys,  of  their 
father's  or  their  grandfather's  day,  or  of  the  early  days  of  the 


Man  not  Falleiiy  but  Rising  123 

republic.  They  are  always  looking  back  for  better  things 
than  they  can  discover  in  their  immediate  vicinity  to-day,  and 
holding  the  idea  that  the  world  is  coming  to  be  worse  and 
worse  from  generation  to  generation.  You  find  them  the 
prophets  of  evil  and  degeneracy  in  our  political  life.  You 
find  them  in  our  industrial  life, —  the  rich  are  getting  richer, 
and  the  poor  are  getting  poorer,  and  the  business  condition  of 
the  world  is  worse  now  than  it  ever  was  before,  and  there  is 
no  prospect  of  its  improving.  You  find  them  dealing  with 
our  social  problems.  The  world,  according  to  them,  used  to 
be  socially  pure  and  high.  In  those  old  days  there  were 
gentlemen  and  ladies  such  as  the  world  has  never  seen  since. 
In  every  department  of  life  it  is  the  same  :  the  good  old 
times  are  hopelessly  gone,  according  to  them. 

On  the  other  hand,  you  will  find  the  type  of  mind  repre- 
sented by  those  who  have  the  forward  look.  Who  are  these  ? 
They  are  the  workers,  hopeful  and  strong.  They  are  the 
seers,  they  are  the  prophets,  they  are  the  great  poets  of  the 
world. 

Note  one  magnificent  and  significant  truth :  there  is  not 
a  great  poet  with  whose  works  I  am  familiar  who  is  a  pessi- 
mist. They  are  all  prophets,  filled  and  inspired  with  hope, 
with  the  possibilities  of  the  race. 

I  must  not  stop  to  deal  with  this  problem  far  enough  to 
say  which  of  these  is  true ;  or,  at  any  rate,  to  go  into  a  long, 
loving  defence  of  the  one  that  you  must  be  aware  that  I  be- 
lieve in.  I  have  studied  carefully  the  history  of  man  from 
the  beginning ;  and  I  believe  the  statement  will  hold,  politi- 
cally, industrially,  socially,  so  far  as  the  family  is  con- 
cerned, so  far  as  business  is  concerned, —  in  any  department 
of  human  life  the  statement  will  hold,  that  the  world  is  un- 
speakably better  to-day  than  it  ever  has  been  in  any  fifty 
years  of  the  past  history  of  the  race. 


1 24  Religion  for  To-day 

But  that  is  not  the  subject  of  my  sermon  this  morning. 
I  wish  now  to  recall  you  to  this  Eden  story,  and  consider 
with  you  as  to  why  and  how  such  a  tale  should  have  come 
into  existence. 

Right  here  let  me  ask  you  to  note  how  true  it  is  that  there 
is  a  tendency  in  the  human  mind  to  tell  itself  stories  as 
means  of  explaining  strange  facts  the  reason  of  which  they 
do  not  scientifically  understand. 

As  an  illustration  of  what  I  mean.  In  different  parts  of 
this  country,  in  different  parts  of  the  Old  World,  you  will 
find  rocks,  bowlders  of  huge  size,  miles  and  miles  away  from 
the  places  from  which  they  must  have  come.  That  is,  these 
bowlders  are  not  at  all  like  the  rock  formations  in  the  places 
where  they  are  found  to-day.  The  aboriginal  peoples  in 
Europe  and  America  knew  nothing  of  the  glacial  epoch, 
and  how  science  to-day  explains  with  perfect  ease  the  fact 
that  these  rocks,  worn  and  shaped  as  they  are,  have  been 
dropped  in  the  places  where  they  are  found ;  and  so  you 
will  find  stories  of  battles  of  the  gods  and  of  the  Titans, 
and  how  these  huge  bowlders  have  been  flung,  as  they  piled 
mountains  on  top  of  each  other  for  their  defence.  And  in 
this  way  the  pictorial  faculty  of  the  childhood  of  the  race 
explains  for  itself  these  otherwise  inexplicable  facts. 

All  over  the  world  you  will  find  places  where  there  is  a 
depression  on  some  mountain  top,  or  some  valley  that  has 
a  shape  in  some  general  fashion  of  the  human  foot, —  very 
large,  perhaps;  and  stories  spring  up  of  how  giants  have 
left  their  tracks  there.  You  will  find  in  Asia,  perhaps  in 
China  and  Japan,  footprints  of  the  Buddha,  or  of  the  other 
deities  who  have  from  time  to  time  visited  the  earth.  On 
the  northern  coast  of  Ireland  there  is  a  most  extraordinary 
formation  called  the  Giant's  Causeway.     It  looks  as  though 


Ma7i  not  Fallen^  but  Rising  1 25 

some  marvellous  prehistoric  people  of  gigantic  size  had 
started  to  build  a  wonderful  paved  way  out  into  the  waters 
of  the  Irish  Channel.  So,  indeed,  myths  have  sprung 
up, —  it  is  the  Giant's  Causeway.  In  the  old  days  the  giants 
started  to  build  a  road  over  to  the  neighboring  coast  of 
Scotland. 

In  this  way  you  will  find  that  men  are  perpetually  telling 
themselves  curious  stories  to  explain  things  which  otherwise 
are  inexplicable  to  them.  Thus,  I  suppose  beyond  ques- 
tion, the  Eden  myth  has  grown  up  as  a  philosophical  ex- 
planation of  the  existence  of  evil,  of  pain,  of  death,  in  the 
world.  The  early  peoples  looked  out  over  the  face  of 
the  earth ;  and  they  saw  thorns  and  thistles,  briers  and 
weeds,  growing  in  the  natural  world.  They  saw  that  there 
was  death,  moral  evil,  suffering  of  every  kind ;  and,  as 
they  began  to  believe  in  the  goodness  of  God,  they  said  to 
themselves,  and  with  perfectly  clear  logic  from  their  point 
of  view,  God  could  not  have  made  the  world  after  this 
fashion  in  the  first  place.  He  must  have  made  it  good,  and 
something  must  have  happened  that  he  did  not  intend. 

At  first  it  does  not  appear  to  them  that  they  are  thinking 
out  a  God  of  limited  wisdom  or  limited  power.  They  have 
not  got  as  far  as  that  yet.  So  they  teach  that  the  world 
was  created  perfect :  it  was  a  garden  of  only  fruits  and 
flowers, —  no  briers,  no  thorns,  no  ugly,  no  worthless 
weeds.  All  fair  and  lovely ;  and  the  first  man  and  the  first 
woman  were  put  into  this  garden,  not  to  know  anjrthing 
about  sin  or  evil  of  any  kind,  never  to  feel  a  pang  of  pain, 
never  to  die.  The  beautiful  Hebrew  tradition  was  that,  if 
they  had  not  committed  this  sin,  not  eaten  this  fruit  which 
theologians  allude  to,  they  would  have  been  transported  to 
heaven  without  dying. 


126  Religion  for  To-day 

Of  course,  we  know  that  a  dream  like  that  to-day  is  child- 
ish, absurd,  impossible,  by  reason  of  the  nature  of  the  uni- 
verse in  which  we  live.  But  this  was  the  old  tradition.  This 
was  their  way  of  explaining  how  death  and  sin  and  sorrow 
and  everything  wrong  came  into  the  world.  God  not  only 
drove  them  out  of  the  garden,  but  he  cursed  the  soil  for 
their  sake ;  and  he  cursed  the  serpent,  and  made  him,  from 
walking  upright, —  a  fact  which  scientists  cannot  under- 
stand,—  crawl  in  the  dust,  and  eat  dust  —  another  curious 
error  —  for  his  food. 

This,  then,  was  the  story  which  grew  up,  and  which  the 
Jews  borrowed  from  their  neighbors. 

Now  let  us  note  two  or  three  points.  I  say  this  tale 
came  into  existence  as  a  philosophical  attempt  at  explaining 
the  existence  of  evil  in  the  world.  But  mark  you,  in  the 
first  place,  it  does  not  explain.  The  Hebrews  tell  us  in 
their  old-time  traditions,  as  recorded  in  this  book,  that  this 
occurred  about  four  thousand  and  four  years  before  the 
birth  of  Jesus.  We  know  to-day  that  thorns  and  thistles 
and  briers  have  been  on  this  planet  hundreds  of  thousands 
of  years.  We  know  that  death  has  been  on  this  planet  as 
long  as  life  has.  We  know  that  pain  has  been  here  from 
the  very  beginning  of  the  organization  of  a  nervous  system 
capable  of  sentiency  of  any  kind. 

So,  as  I  said,  this  story,  even  if  we  could  believe  it  to  be 
true,  does  not  explain. 

Note  in  the  second  place,  if  it  were  true,  we  should  be 
compelled  to-day,  from  the  higher  point  of  moral  advance 
which  we  have  reached,  to  declare  it  unworthy  of  God  and 
hopeless  for  man.  It  is  unjust,  it  is  cruel.  We  could  not 
accept  it  as  being  worthy  of  any  just  conception  of  the 
government  of  this  world. 


Ma7i  not  Fallen^  but  Rising  12  J 

Consider  for  a  moment.  Here  God  is  represented  as 
having  created  a  man  and  a  woman,  perfect  indeed,  but 
absolutely  without  experience, —  children,  so  far  as  knowl- 
edge is  concerned.  He  does  not  tell  them  anything  beyond 
the  fact  that  they  themselves  shall  die  if  they  touch  this 
forbidden  fruit.  And  yet,  according  to  the  theology  of 
Christendom,  on  the  action  of  these  two  infantile,  inexperi- 
enced, ignorant,  weak  people,  one  man  and  one  woman, 
your  immortal  destiny  hung,  and  mine.  On  the  choice  of 
these  two,  utterly  unfit  to  choose,  hung  the  destiny  of  the 
countless  millions  of  men  and  women  to  be  born  to  the 
farthest  epoch  of  time  !     The  eternal  horror  of  it ! 

My  friends,  were  it  not  treated  earnestly  by  grave  and 
reverend  divines  as  a  part  of  the  theological  scheme  of  the 
world's  salvation,  it  would  seem  too  childish  for  considera- 
tion,—  too  childish  on  the  intellectual  side,  too  grotesquely 
hideous  on  the  moral  side,  to  be  regarded  with  seriousness 
even  for  a  moment. 

In  the  third  place,  note  another  thing.  Whether  it  be  true 
or  just  or  not,  I  wish  to  emphasize  the  point,  so  you  will  not 
forget  it,  that  there  does  not  exist  on  the  face  of  the  earth 
the  slightest  reason  for  thinking  that  such  a  thing  ever  hap- 
pened. There  is  no  more  reason  for  regarding  it  as  historic 
than  there  is  for  treating  as  historic  the  labors  of  Hercules 
or  the  descent  of  Ulysses  into  the  underworld.  It  is  not 
even  Hebrew  in  its  origin.  It  is  pagan,  a  pagan  myth,  with- 
out the  slightest  shadow  of  a  shade  of  evidence  in  favor  of 
its  being  historic. 

You  will  find  a  great  many  persons,  theologians,  doctors 
of  divinity,  teachers  in  our  seminaries  and  colleges,  who, 
when  they  are  treating  some  matter  that  is  hard  to  believe 
that    is  found  in  the  Old  Testament,  will   say.  We  might 


128  Religion  for  To-day 

give  this  up  if  it  stood  on  its  own  foundation  alone ;  but  — 
as  in  the  case  of  the  Jonah  story  that  has  been  cited  a  hun- 
dred times  this  winter  —  Jesus  referred  to  it,  and  indorsed  it 
as  true. 

But  note  the  significance  of  the  fact :  so  far  as  the  story 
of  the  fall  of  man  is  concerned,  Jesus  did  not  refer  to  it. 
So  far  as  any  word  of  his  is  concerned,  he  had  never  heard 
of  it ;  or,  if  he  had,  he  did  not  consider  it  of  sufficient  impor- 
tance to  speak  of  it. 

Then  note  right  here  —  for  I  think  it  is  of  immense  sig- 
nificance, even  decisive  significance,  if  there  was  nothing  else 
to  be  said  —  this  silence  of  Jesus.  Take  for  a  moment  the 
orthodox  point  of  view.  Jesus  then  was  God.  He  had 
come  to  this  earth,  fallen  and  ruined,  on  purpose  to  save 
men.  He  knew  that  the  fall  of  man  was  the  beginning  of 
all  the  evil  and  suffering,  the  beginning  of  that  endless  tor- 
ment into  which  the  great  majority  of  people  had  entered 
and  were  to  enter  to  the  end  of  time. 

Does  it  not  seem  a  little  strange  that  God,  coming  down 
to  the  world  on  purpose  to  save  men  from  the  fall,  should 
never  have  said  anything  about  it  ?  Does  it  not  seem  a  little 
peculiar  that  he  should  not  at  least  have  referred  to  it? 
No,  not  one  slightest  indication  that  he  knew  or  cared  any- 
thing about  it  whatever ! 

Now,  in  the  fourth  place,  I  wish  to  remark  concerning  this 
fall  of  man  story,  as  an  explanation  of  the  condition  of  the 
race,  that  God  has  revealed  to  the  modern  world  by  the 
hand  of  his  messenger,  clear-eyed,  truth-loving  Science, — 
God  has  revealed  to  the  modern  world  an  explanation  of  the 
existence  of  briers  and  thorns  and  thistles,  of  pain,  of  moral 
evil,  and  of  death.  And  the  explanation  that  he  has  thus 
given  us  is  one  worthy  of  himself,  one  honorable  to  our 
Father,  one  full  of  hope  for  his  children. 


Man  not  Fallen,  hut  Rising  129 

For  what  is  this  explanation  of  science  ?  It  is  that  all 
these  growths  are  natural  products  of  the  soil.  The  thorn, 
the  brier,  the  thistle,  the  weeds,  are  simply  the  parents,  the 
ancestors  of  the  flowers  and  fruits.  The  new  began  in  the 
bitter  and  the  sharp  and  the  rough ;  and  out  of  them  have 
evolved  all  the  sweet,  all  the  beautiful,  all  the  helpful  things 
that  we  discover  on  the  face  of  the  earth. 

As  to  pain,  as  I  had  occasion  to  tell  you  last  Sunday, 
science  tells  us  that  it  is  inseparable  from  sentient  existence, 
and  not  only  that,  but  that  it  is  absolutely  essential  as  a 
guard  and  a  guide  to  this  sentient  existence. 

Then,  so  far  as  moral  evil  is  concerned,  as  again  I  told 
you  last  Sunday,  science  has  taught  us  to  know,  not  to  guess, 
that  we  have  been  developed  from  the  lower  forms  of  life 
here  on  the  earth,  and  that,  instead  of  evil  having  originated 
at  the  start,  it  was  good  which  originated  at  the  start ;  and 
man  has  been  climbing  ever  higher  and  higher,  sloughing  off 
the  evil  and  reaching  on  towards  the  attainment  of  the 
good. 

Then,  too,  death  is  absolutely  essential  to  an  organiza- 
tion like  ours,  essential  to  the  further  growth,  deliverance, 
and  advance  of  man  as  a  spiritual  being  in  another  higher 
and  finer  world.  Death  is  no  after-thought,  then.  God 
did  not  create  a  world  intending  to  leave  death  out,  and 
then  find  that  he  had  been  outwitted  by  his  adversary 
and  ours,  and  that  so  death  was  the  invasion  of  an  evil 
power  from  without,  devastating  his  fair  world.  Death  is 
part  of  the  intention  of  God,  part  of  the  original  universal 
divine  order. 

God,  then,  I  say,  has  revealed  to  us  in  this  better  day 
not  only  that  the  old  borrowed  mythical  pagan  story  is  not 
true,  but  he  has  revealed  to  us  the  magnificent  and  entirely 


130  Religion  for  To-day 

satisfactory  explanation  of  what  that  fairy  story  utterly  failed 
to  explain. 

Now  I  wish  for  a  little  further  to  dwell  upon  this  doctrine 
of  the  fall  of  man  as  it  is  related  to  the  theological  schemes 
of  Christendom. 

I  was  talking  with  a  friend  within  forty-eight  hours  ;  and 
this  friend  raised  an  objection  to  certain  parts  of  the  sermon 
which  I  am  preaching  this  morning,  based  on  the  supposed 
conditions  and  needs  of  you  who  I  am  addressing.  I  wish 
to  speak  of  this  objection,  and  appeal  to  you  as  to  whether 
it  be  valid  or  not. 

This  friend  said  that,  possibly,  making  so  much  of  this 
story  of  the  fall  of  man  was  not  needed ;  that  people  did  not 
believe  it  now;  that  perhaps  it  was  threshing  old  straw 
which  had  been  sufficiently  threshed  before.  My  answer 
was  a  twofold  one.  In  the  first  place,  that  it  seemed  to  me 
that  we  Unitarians  need  to  be  educated  as  to  the  thought  of 
the  past  not  only,  but  as  to  why  we  hold  it  no  longer,  why 
we  are  compelled,  religiously  and  in  deference  to  our  love 
and  reverence  for  God,  to  leave  it  behind  and  go  on  to 
something  which  seems  to  us  unspeakably  better;  that  we 
ought  to  be  able  to  give  others,  who  inquire  what  we  mean 
by  being  Unitarians,  an  adequate  and  intelligible  reason  for 
the  faith  that  is  in  us. 

Again,  in  the  second  place,  another  reason,  I  said,  is 
this :  people  are  all  the  time  saying  these  old  doctrines  are 
outgrown,  they  are  not  held  any  longer.  And  this  friend 
asked,  How  many  ministers  in  New  York  do  you  suppose 
really  believe  in  the  fall  of  man  ?  My  answer  was  :  I  do 
not  know.  I  presume  there  are  some  —  a  very  large  num- 
ber of  them  —  who  do  not  believe  it.  But  I  added  this 
statement  or  this  question  :   How  many  of  the  ministers  in 


Man  not  Fallen,  but  Rising  131 

the  city  of  New  York  to-day  would  dare  to  say  in  their 
pulpits  that  they  did  not  believe  it  ?  How  many  of  them 
would  thus  risk  their  standing  as  ministers  ? 

Why,  New  York  and  Brooklyn  are  in  an  uproar  now,  over 
what  ?  Over  the  mildest  kind  of  heresy  on  the  part  of  Dr. 
Abbott, —  heresy  that  has  been  commonplace  to  us  for  a 
quarter  of  a  century.  Ministers  are  attacking  him  ;  minis- 
terial associations  are  calling  him  to  account ;  newspapers 
are  saying  he  is  an  infidel.  And,  if  Dr.  Abbott  were  a 
weaker,  smaller  man,  he  might  not  hold  his  position  for  a 
month. 

So  long,  then,  as  a  childish,  utterly  absurd  pagan  story 
is  seriously  regarded  as  part  of  the  divine  and  infallible 
revelation  of  God,  and  the  ministers,  whether  they  believe 
it  or  not,  dare  not  say  they  do  not  believe  it,  it  seems  to  me 
that  the  time  has  not  passed  for  speaking  on  the  subject. 

I  wish  now  to  ask  your  attention  for  a  little  while  to 
the  vital  relation  existing  between  the  doctrine  of  the  fall  of 
man  and  the  creeds. 

Let  me  say  again,  for  emphasis  and  clearness,  that  there 
is,  so  far  as  I  know,  so  far  as  I  can  imagine,  not  a  single 
doctrine  in  the  great  creeds  of  Christendom  that  would  be 
there  at  all,  if  the  fall  of  man  being  given  up,  the  creed- 
makers  were  logical,  and  followed  that  step  to  its  necessary 
logical  conclusion. 

Take,  for  example,  the  doctrine  of  the  total  depravity  of 
the  race ;  that  is,  that  man  is  in  the  condition  that  the 
churches  say  he  is,  so  that  he  needs  what  they  have  to  offer. 
Of  course,  that  is  supposed  to  be  the  result  of  the  fall. 

Take  again  the  supposed  necessity  of  having  an  abso- 
lutely infallible  book  of  revelation.  If  man  is  in  a  condi- 
tion the  nature  of  which  he  cannot  possibly  discover  by 


132  Religion  for  To-day 

his  own  reason  and  experience,  and  if  on  account  of  that 
condition  he  needs  to  do  something  which  he  is  not  wise 
enough  to  find  out,  why,  then,  perhaps  he  does  need  an 
infallible  book  of  revelation  to  tell  him  these  things. 

Then  it  has  been  the  story  of  theologians  for  thousands  of 
years  that  not  only  was  the  moral  nature  of  man  depraved 
by  the  fall,  but  his  intellectual  nature  broken  and  disabled, 
so  that  he  was  incompetent  to  find  out  truth.  Of  course, 
if  the  fall  of  man  is  given  up,  that  doctrine  goes,  too.  And 
the  competency  of  man,  so  far  as  his  brain  is  concerned,  to 
find  out  what  kind  of  a  world  he  lives  in  and  what  kind  of 
a  being  he  is,  is  conceded. 

Then,  again,  why  the  necessity  for  that  terrible,  stupen- 
dous tragedy,  the  death  of  God  himself  at  the  hands  of  his 
enraged  and  blinded  creatures.-*  The  blood  atonement 
supposed  thus  to  be  wrought  out,  they  tell  us,  is  needed 
because  man  is  a  fallen,  ruined,  sinful  creature.  If  the  fall 
is  given  up,  then  no  need  of  such  a  terrific  imagining  as 
that. 

The  old  doctrine  of  conversion,  that  man  must  be  miracu- 
lously changed,  his  old  heart  taken  away  and  another  one 
put  in  its  place,  that  also  naturally  goes,  if  man  is  not  a 
hater  of  God,  but  only  a  weak  and  blinded  seeker  after  the 
right  way.  So,  too,  the  old  doctrine  of  salvation  in  the 
other  world  is  no  longer  needed,  if  the  fall  be  not  an  historic 
fact. 

The  point  I  wish  to  emphasize  therefore  is  that,  if  the 
fall  be  given  up,  these  things  go  with  it.  The  old  earth  and 
the  old  heaven  have  passed  away. 

O  friends,  having  been  born  as  I  was  in  that  old  uni- 
verse, having  struggled  and  wept  and  prayed  through  a 
boyhood  overshadowed  by  the  smoke  of  the  pit  as  it  as- 


Man  not  Fallen,  hit  Rising  133 

cended  and  blotted  out  the  stars,  it  seems  to  me  that,  in 
coming  out  into  this  new  universe,  as  though  I  had  escaped 
from  the  underground  caverns  in  which  the  barbaric 
ancestors  of  the  race  began,  and  had  come  out  breathless, 
panting,  but  so  glad  and  so  thankful,  into  God's  sunlight, 
where  his  winds  of  reviving  blow  upon  my  cheeks,  and 
where  I  can  look  into  the  clear,  serene  heaven  without 
seeing  the  scowling  face  of  hate  looking  down  upon  a  hope- 
less world. 

Can  you  dream  what  it  means  to  me  to  have  found  God's 
real  world,  to  have  found,  in  the  place  of  the  old  conception 
of  the  Divine,  my  Father  and  the  Father  of  my  elder  brother, 
Jesus  of  Nazareth,  who  teaches  and  helps  me  to  love  him  ? 
Can  you  imagine  what  it  means  ? 

All  this,  then,  if  the  fall  of  man  be  not  true,  fades  like  a 
hideous  dream  of  the  night  when  the  sun  is  up.  We  are 
not  in  that  kind  of  world.  We  have  not  fallen.  God  does 
not  hate  us.  God  did  not  need  to  die  and  himself  suffer 
torments  in  hell  before  he  could  forgive  us  for  our  mistakes 
and  errors.  Jesus  teaches  another  doctrine  than  that  in 
that  marvellous  parable  of  the  prodigal  son.  All  the  son 
there  needed  was  simply  to  come  to  the  father,  and  tell  him 
he  was  wrong ;  and  the  arms  of  the  father  were  about  him, 
and  the  tears  of  gladness  falling  on  his  neck. 

That  is  the  God  of  Jesus.  That  is  the  salvation  of  Jesus, 
which  has  been  displaced  and  hidden  away  by  the  barbaric 
conceptions  of  the  pagan  world,  that  had  no  place  in  the 
thought  of  the  loving,  gentle,  great  prophet  of  Nazareth. 

The  world  does  not  need  to  be  saved  in  the  technical, 
theological  sense  of  the  word ;  for  it  has  never  been  lost. 
We  do  not  need  an  atonement  to  make  it  possible  for  God 
to  clasp  in  his  arms  his  own  children.     We  do  not  need  any 


1 34  Religion  for  To-day 

arrogant,  conceited  priesthood  standing  door-keeper  between 
us  and  the  welcome  of  our  Father,  which  is  extended  to  the 
poorest  and  meanest  of  all  his  children.  We  do  not  need 
this  whole  elaborate  scheme  and  framework  that  has  been 
dreamed  out  and  built  into  cathedrals  and  churches  and 
institutions  and  creeds, — built  into  a  power  that  over- 
shadows the  world  and  tyrannizes  the  brains  and  the  souls 
of  men.  It  is  an  impertinence,  it  is  worse  than  a  crime : 
it  has  no  justification  in  the  history  of  the  world  or  in  the 
justice  or  the  loving  thought  of  God. 

What  does  man  need?  Consider  the  fact  that  he  started 
close  on  the  borders  of  the  animal  world,  and  along  a  path- 
way of  dust  and  tears  and  blood  has  been  climbing,  striving, 
slipping,  falling,  struggling  on  his  feet  again,  but  climbing, 
ascending,  from  that  far-off  beginning  until  to-day.  He  has 
been  making  mistakes,  and  trying  to  rectify  them  ;  has  been 
struggling  ever  to  attain  some  fairer,  finer,  better  thing  than 
he  has  known.     What  does  he  need  t 

He  needs  first,  friends,  intellectual  cultivation  and  train- 
ing. He  needs  to  see.  He  needs  to  understand.  He 
needs  to  comprehend  something  at  least,  of  the  kind  of 
universe  in  which  he  lives  and  of  the  kind  of  creature  he  is, 
the  relations  in  which  he  stands,  and  ought  to  stand,  to  his 
fellow-men.  He  needs  to  be  educated, —  not  educated  in 
the  mere  sense  of  having  facts  given  him,  but  by  being 
evolved,  unfolded,  led  out  and  up,  until  he  gains  mastery 
of  himself  and  his  surroundings.  He  needs  to  be 
morally  educated,  taught  the  distinctions  between  right  and 
wrong ;  and  taught  that  right,  how  many  times  ever  it  may 
be  crucified,  is  always  success,  and  that  wrong,  however 
much  enthroned,  is  always  failure.  He  needs  to  be  taught 
that  this  universe  is  a  moral  universe  to  its  core.     He  needs 


Man  not  Fallen^  but  Rising  135 

to  be  taught  that  righteousness  is  life  and  peace  and  joy, 
that  all  good  is  along  that  line.  He  needs  to  have  the  wor- 
shipful, the  aspirational  side  of  his  nature  developed.  He 
needs  to  be  taught  to  look  up,  to  look  up  with  reverence,  to 
look  up  with  admiration ;  to  be  filled  with  the  sense  of  the 
fineness  and  the  beauty  of  those  things  not  yet  attained,  so 
that  he  shall  naturally  and  necessarily  struggle  after  their 
attainment. 

You  know  perfectly  well  that  men  gradually  become 
wrought  over  into  the  likeness  of  the  things  they  admire. 

Man,  then,  needs  to  be  cultivated  as  a  worshipper;  and 
then  he  needs  to  be  trained  in  his  spiritual  nature,  to  have 
that  wrought  upon,  developed,  until  there  dawns  upon  his 
upward-looking  vision  a  sense  of  kinship  with  Him  who  is  our 
Father,  our  Mother  in  heaven  and  on  earth.  He  needs  to 
know  that  now  are  we  all,  whether  we  realize  it  or  not,  chil- 
dren of  God,  and  that,  as  we  look  forward  to  some  destiny  so 
magnificent,  so  much  beyond  anything  we  can  at  present 
dream,  it  doth  not  yet  appear,  is  not  yet  apparent,  what  we 
shall  be.  He  needs  to  be  thrilled  with  that  divine  longing 
out  of  which  comes  all  the  advance  of  the  world. 

This  is  what  religion  from  the  modern  point  of  view 
proposes  to  do  for  the  race;  and  that  means  creating  the 
kingdom  of  God  here  on  earth,  until  among  men  the  will 
of  God  shall  be  done  as  it  is  in  the  starry  heavens  over 
our  heads. 


REVELATION    NATURAL    AND 
PROGRESSIVE. 


The  contest  which,  among  the  critics,  the  theologians, 
the  preachers,  the  newspaper  writers,  and  the  people  on 
the  streets,  is  at  present  raging  around  the  Bible,  is  not  at 
all  —  as  I  understand  it,  at  any  rate  —  the  question  as  to 
whether  God  has  revealed  himself  to  his  children;  it  is 
only  a  question  as  to  how  he  has  done  it.  Is  revelation 
supernatural,  partial,  confined  to  only  a  part  of  the  people 
of  the  world  and  a  limited  portion  of  its  time  and  history  ? 
and  is  it  finished  once  for  all  and  written  in  a  book  ?  Is 
revelation  natural,  universal,  reaching  all  God's  children, 
progressive,  never  finished,  but  having  some  new  word  to 
speak  to  us  with  every  new  epoch,  with  every  new  day  ? 

The  question,  then,  I  beseech  you  to  notice,  is  right  in 
here.  The  critics,  those  who  do  not  accept  the  view  of 
revelation  which  is  crystallized  into  the  old  creeds,  are  has- 
tily, ignorantly,  maliciously,  called  destructives.  It  is  said 
they  are  enemies  of  God,  and  willing  to  take  away  his 
truth  and  hope  from  the  world. 

I  beg  you,  therefore,  to  notice  just  the  nature  of  this  con- 
test. Not,  as  I  have  said,  a  question  as  to  whether  God 
has  revealed  himself,  but  as  to  how,  and  as  to  whether  that 
revelation  is  worthy  of  God  and  full  of  hope  and  comfort, 
not  for  some  little  chosen  body  of  the  elect,  but  for  all 
God's  children. 


Rei>elation  Natural  and  Progressive  137 

There  is  more  than  one  way  of  revealing  God.  Placing 
a  new  fact  or  a  new  book  before  us  in  which  is  contained 
something  that  the  world  never  thought  of  before  is  one 
way ;  but  God  is  equally  revealed  to  us  afresh  when  we  gain 
some  new  insight,  when  through  experience  we  have  discov- 
ered something  unknown  before,  but  which  has  always  been 
a  part  of  God's  truth.  By  means  of  the  telescope,  one  of 
man's  most  magnificent  discoveries,  new  suns  are  revealed 
and  new  worlds  laid  bare  to  the  thought  and  imagination  of 
man.  By  means  of  the  microscope  the  infinitely  little  —  as 
marvellous  to  those  who  think  as  the  infinitely  great  —  is 
also  revealed.  If  the  eyes  gain  new  insight  and  are  able  to 
interpret  afresh  any  of  the  old  truths,  then  God  reveals  him- 
self anew  to  his  children. 

It  is  a  question,  then,  not  of  taking  away  hope  from  men, 
it  is  a  question  of  giving  hope  to  men  :  it  is  a  question 
dealing,  I  believe,  with  the  very  thought  of  our  Father, — 
a  question  as  to  whether  we  can  cherish  a  conception  of 
him  that  we  can  love  and  reverence  and  adore. 

Do  not,  then,  be  led  astray  by  any  one  who  tells  you  that 
he  who  dares  to  open  his  eyes  and  see  the  new  light  with 
which  God  is  flooding  the  modern  world  is  an  enemy  of 
man.  Do  not  let  any  one  persuade  you  that  he  is  anything 
else  than  the  only  consistent  friend  of  man,  and  the  only 
one  ready  to  do  real  honor  to  our  Father  in  heaven. 

With  so  much  of  preliminary,  let  us  then  reverently,  but 
fearlessly  and  earnestly,  confront  our  theme. 

An  old  psalm-writer  —  we  do  not  know  who  he  was,  and 
we  do  not  know  just  the  year  in  the  history  of  the  world 
in  which  he  lived  —  says,  "Thy  word  is  a  lamp  unto  my 
feet  and  a  light  unto  my  path." 

It  has  been  assumed,  I  was  taught  as  a  boy  to  believe, 


138  Religion  for  To-day 

it  is  taken  for  granted  in  nearly  all  the  pulpits  of  Christen- 
dom, that,  when  the  Psalmist  wrote  these  words,  he  was 
referring  to  the  Bible,  and  that  the  Bible,  and  only  the 
Bible,  is  that  word  of  God  which  is  a  light  to  the  feet  and 
a  lamp  to  the  path.  But  consider,  friends,  for  one  moment. 
When  this  psalm  was  written,  there  was  not  one  single  word 
of  the  New  Testament  in  existence,  and  only  a  part  of  the 
Old.  And  that  part  of  the  Old  Testament  which  had  been 
written  was  not  gathered  into  a  book :  it  was  not  spoken  of 
as  one  book.  Each  separate  book  that  up  to  this  time  had 
been  composed  and  had  come  to  be  regarded  as  sacred  was 
made  into  a  separate  roll  and  had  its  own  place  in  the 
synagogue.  That  part  of  the  Old  Testament  that  was  in 
existence  then  at  this  time  was  simply  a  little  library,  not 
one  book  at  all.  So  that  any  one  referring  to  it  would 
never  speak  of  it  as  a  book.  And  it  was  not  in  any  exclu- 
sive sense  called  the  word  of  God. 

So,  of  course,  the  Psalmist,  when  he  said,  "  Thy  word  is 
a  lamp  unto  my  feet,"  meant  more  than  the  truth  which  is 
contained  in  any  book.  He  did  not  have  in  mind  a  book 
at  all.  Any  word  of  God,  no  matter  how  uttered,  no  matter 
by  what  method  spoken,  no  matter  by  what  ear  heard, — 
whether  it  come  from  the  stars  over  our  heads  or  spoken 
to  us  by  the  unfolding  beauty  of  a  flower, —  all,  whether 
it  be  the  utterance  of  some  heroic  deed  in  the  character 
of  one  of  our  fellow-men,  whatever  is  an  utterance  of 
the  divine  truth,  is  a  part  of  the  word  of  God. 

Then  let  us  remember  that,  even  if  we  should  call  this 
Bible  the  word  of  God,  which  in  any  exclusive  sense  we 
have  no  warrant  for  doing ;  if  we  should  believe  that  at  the 
beginning  God  did  inspire  certain  men  to  write  just  these 
particular  books,  and  to  give  them  to  the  world  without 


Revelation  Natural  and  Progressive  139 

error  or  flaw  of  any  kind ;  if  that  was  the  nature  of  the 
book  in  the  first  place, —  we  have  no  such  infallible,  no  such 
inspired  copy  to-day.  For,  remember,  the  oldest  manu- 
script of  any  part  of  the  New  Testament,  for  example, 
which  exists  anywhere  in  the  world  at  the  present  time, 
does  not  take  us  much  nearer  to  Jesus  than  we  are  to-day 
to  Chaucer. 

In  other  words,  the  oldest  manuscript  we  have  takes  us 
back  to  the  fourth  century  only.  What  lies  back  of  that 
copy.**  We  have  no  assurance  that  the  copyists  were 
infallible  or  inspired ;  and  we  know  to-day  that  there  is 
hardly  one  man  in  ten  thousand  who  can  copy  six  pages  of 
manuscript  and  do  it  with  precise  accuracy.  We  know,  for 
example,  that  the  manuscripts  which  we  have  of  the  New 
Testament  contain  thousands  of  various  readings.  These 
differences  extend  in  some  cases  to  half  a  chapter ;  in 
others,  to  three  or  four  separate  verses;  in  thousands  of 
places,  to  phrases  or  words. 

Suppose,  then,  we  could  know  that  in  the  first  place  the 
Bible  was  infallible  and  inspired,  we  know  now  that  we 
have  no  such  book.  I  grant  you  we  can  be  about  as  cer- 
tain of  the  accuracy  of  the  wording  of  the  New  Testament 
as  we  can  of  the  works  of  Cicero  or  Xenophon.  But, 
mark  you,  that  is  not  enough  in  the  face  of  the  claim  that 
is  made  on  behalf  of  this  book.  The  destiny  of  our  im- 
mortal souls  does  not  hang  on  the  accuracy  of  a  phrase  in 
Cicero  or  Xenophon.  If  it  did,  or  were  supposed  to,  then 
you  would  find  the  critics  as  exercised  and  anxious  over 
these  as  they  are  over  the  New  Testament  manuscripts 
themselves. 

Think  of  it,  friends  !  Does  any  one,  can  any  one,  believe 
that  the  all-loving  Father  in  heaven  makes   the  matter  of 


140  Religion  for  To-day 

eternal  salvation  of  the  soul  hang  on  the  accuracy  of  a 
text  which  is  four  hundred  years  away  from  the  speaker's 
time,  in  an  age  when  there  was  no  such  thing  as  short- 
hand writing  heard  of,  no  reporting,  no  printing ;  and  when 
we  know  that  theological  bias  and  passion  and  prejudice 
have  handled  and  played  with  these  manuscripts ;  and 
when  we  know  that  the  ignorance  and  carelessness  of 
copyists  have  filled  them  with  errors  of  a  hundred  differ- 
ent kinds? 

I  wish  now,  friends, —  I  say  I  wish :  I  do  not  wish,  but 
I  am  under  compulsion, —  to  consider  a  little  the  nature  of 
this  wonderful  book. 

I  beg  you  to  notice,  and  do  not  go  astray  here  any  of 
you,  that  I  am  not  going  to  say  one  word  against  the 
Bible.  Note,  if  you  please,  the  Bible  does  not  claim  any- 
where to  be  inspired.  Some  of  the  writers,  the  speakers, 
claim  that  they  are  proclaiming  God's  truth  in  some  particu- 
lar message ;  but  they  did  it  naturally,  earnestly,  as  I  claim 
this  morning  that  I  am  delivering  to  you  God's  truth,  that 
I  am  speaking  to  you  some  of  God's  words. 

You  will  perhaps, —  or,  if  you  do  not,  some  critic  of  what 
I  am  saying  will, —  ask  me  if  I  have  overlooked  a  passage 
in  the  Second  Epistle  of  Timothy,  which  in  the  old  version 
of  the  New  Testament  reads,  "All  scripture  is  given  by 
inspiration  of  God."  I  have  not  overlooked  it.  In  the 
first  place,  if  you  will  read  it  in  the  Revised  Version,  read 
it  as  every  scholar  knows  it  ought  to  be  read  and  has  known 
it  for  years,  you  will  find  it  runs  in  this  way :  "  Every  script- 
ure which  is  given  by  inspiration  of  God  is  profitable."  It 
does  not  say  what  scripture ;  and,  as  I  said  before,  the 
New  Testament  was  not  gathered  into  a  book  at  the  time 
when  this  Epistle  to  Timothy  was  written.     There  was  no 


Revelation  Natural  afid  Progressive  141 

book,  New  Testament  or  Old,  which  the  writer  had  in  mind 
when  he  used  the  word  "scripture." 

Perhaps  some  other  critic  will  remind  me  that  the  writer 
of  the  last  book  in  the  New  Testament  issues  a  malediction, 
a  curse,  upon  any  one  who  has  the  temerity  to  add  any- 
thing to  or  take  anything  away  from  this  book.  Remember, 
however,  he  is  referring  only  to  the  book  which  he  is  writ- 
ing,— not  to  the  New  Testament,  not  to  the  Old  Bible, 
which  I  need  to  say  to  you  over  and  over  again  was  not 
then  in  existence,  in  the  sense  in  which  we  speak  of  it 
to-day.  And  this  book,  the  writer  of  which  dares  to  curse 
his  fellows  who  have  the  presumption  to  question  anything 
which  he  said,  is  the  one  book  which  for  hundreds  of  years 
was  regarded  as  not  fit  to  be  in  the  Canon  by  the  fathers 
themselves ;  and  it  is  the  book  which  Luther  and  which 
Calvin  as  late  as  the  sixteenth  century  declared  had  no 
business  to  be  there  at  all. 

This  simply  means  that  that  saying  does  not  apply  to  the 
Bible  as  we  have  it  to-day ;  and,  if  it  did,  instead  of  being 
frightened  at  the  malediction,  I  should  question  the  Chris- 
tian character  and  courtesy  of  him  who  uttered  it. 

The  Bible,  then,  does  not  claim  to  be  infallible,  does 
not  claim  to  be  exceptionally  inspired.  No  claims  are 
made  for  it  except  such  as  are  made  for  the  scriptures 
of  other  people.  The  Chinese,  the  Hindus,  the  Brah- 
mins, the  Buddhists,  the  Mohammedans,  the  Egyptians, 
the  Greeks,  and  Romans,  —  almost  all  of  the  ancient 
nations  of  the  world,  —  the  Norse  people,  have  had  their 
infallible  Scriptures.  And  let  me  tell  you,  friends,  they 
have  precisely  the  same  and  as  much  reason  for  regarding 
their  Scriptures  as  infallibly  inspired  as  we  have  for  so 
looking  upon  ours. 


142  Religion  for  To-day 

What  reason  is  that  ?  Nothing  save  the  reverence  which 
has  gathered  about  that  which  is  old, —  nothing ! 

Now  will  you  be  patient  with  me  while  I  consider  for  a 
little  some  of  the  characteristics  of  this  Book  ?  And  do  not 
think  I  am  finding  fault  with  it.  I  love  it  so  much,  friends, 
that  it  is  a  pain  to  me  sometimes  even  to  tell  the  truth 
about  it,  lest  I  be  misunderstood.  And  pardon  me  for  say- 
ing, as  you  may  misjudge  my  attitude  towards  it,  I  never 
loved  it  as  I  love  it  to-day.  When  I  was  trained  to  believe 
that  every  single  word  in  it  was  absolutely  infallible,  when 
I  dared  not  use  my  reason  about  it,  dared  not  ask  any 
questions,  bowed  myself  in  its  presence ;  even  then  I  did  not 
love  it  as  I  love  it  to-day.  Grand,  inspiring,  magnificent, 
one  of  the  most  wonderful  books  of  the  world !  Some  of  us 
are  compelled  into  an  attitude  that  is  misunderstood  as  an- 
tagonistic merely  because  we  are  anxious  that  the  world 
should  know  the  truth,  and  should  read  freely  and  fearlessly 
that  larger  book  of  God  which  includes  the  truth  of  the 
Bible,  but  which  runs  over  it  on  every  side,  and  which  has 
always  been  being  written,  and  is  being  written  to-day,  and 
will  be  being  written  forevermore. 

What  have  we  here  then,  friends?  Take  the  Bible  in 
your  hand,  and  look  at  it.  Why  is  it  bound  in  one  volume  .-* 
For  no  reason  in  the  world  except  a  bookmaker's  reason 
and  the  reason  of  public  convenience.  It  is  not  one  book: 
it  is  sixty-six  little  books  or  pamphlets ;  and  they  were  writ- 
ten during  a  period  covering  something  like  a  thousand 
years. 

And  who  wrote  them  }  Concerning  three-fourths  —  I 
speak  roughly,  without  having  counted  —  of  these  books,  we 
have  to  notice  that  they  are  purely  anonymous.  No  one  in 
the  world  is  wise  enough  to  know  who  wrote  them. 


Revelation  Natural  and  Progressive  143 

Concerning  the  most  of  them,  no  one  knows  with  any 
particular  accuracy  when  they  were  written. 

Concerning  the  most  of  them,  nobody  knows  where  they 
were  written. 

Now,  friends,  let  me  give  you  an  illustration. 

Suppose  a  book  should  be  made  up  of  the  choicest  culling 
of  English  literature.  Begin  with  "Piers  Ploughman"; 
include  in  it  the  old  English  ideas  as  to  the  origin  of  the 
world ;  include  in  it  scraps  of  lore,  bits  of  verse,  fragments 
of  the  sayings  of  the  sages ;  let  there  be  history,  let  there 
be  poetry,  let  there  be  all  kinds  of  literary  productions 
in  it;  and  let  it  extend  from  *'  Piers  Ploughman,"  down  to 
Kipling.  And  then  bind  these  all  in  one  book;  and  you 
would  have  a  book  made  up  very  like  the  Old  Testament, 
very  like  the  New, —  a  large  number  of  little  pamphlets 
bound  in  one,  covering  a  long  period  of  time,  representing 
different  ideas. 

Read  with  your  eyes  open,  friends ;  and  you  will  see  that 
the  Hebrews  started  as  a  polytheistic,  man-sacrificing  race, 
where  all  barbaric  people  started,  with  the  crudest  ideas  of 
the  world  and  of  God  and  of  man.  And  they  grew  and  de- 
veloped as  other  people  have  grown  and  developed;  and 
their  morals  and  their  religion  climbed  as  their  civilization 
climbed,  until  from  these  ignorant  barbarians  you  have  the 
magnificent  —  still  barbaric,  however  —  kingdom  of  Solo- 
mon. You  have  the  utterances  of  the  second  Isaiah,  some 
of  the  grandest  utterances  of  the  world;  you  have  the 
magnificent  mountain  summit  of  the  Nazarene  ;  you  have 
all  the  spiritual  teachings  of  the  New  Testament.  But 
perfectly  natural,  human  growth  that  can  be  traced  along 
every  step,  from  the  beginning  to  the  last  point  that  it 
has  reached. 


144  Religion  for  To-day 

This  is  what  we  have  when  we  face  this  wonderful  old 
book.  And  is  it  unnatural,  is  it  strange,  that  we  should  find 
in  it  the  traces  of  its  origin,  the  finger-marks  of  the  people 
who  composed  it  and  for  whom  it  was  composed  ?  Ought 
we  to  expect  to  find  it  infallible  ?  Ought  we  to  expect  to  find 
it  historically  or  scientifically  accurate?  Ought  we  to  be 
surprised  that  one  writer  contradicts  the  teaching  of  another  ? 
For  only  the  most  violent  and  blinded  partisanship  of  the 
men  who  hold  briefs  for  particular  cases  which  they  are 
bound  to  defend  can  question  for  an  instant  that  there  are 
different  theories  of  morals,  different  theories  of  history, 
different  theories  of  science,  different  theories  of  ethics  and 
religion  in  the  Book. 

The  Book  of  Ecclesiastes,  for  instance,  was  written  by  an 
atheist  and  an  infidel, —  an  infidel,  at  any  rate,  if  not  an 
atheist,  who  teaches  in  the  most  forcible  way  that  there  is 
no  future  life,  and  that  the  best  we  can  do  is  to  get  all  we 
can  out  of  this  one  and  not  worry  about  anything  else. 
This  is  not  entirely  in  accord  with  the  New  Testament! 
Precisely  similar  things  hold  good  in  every  department  of 
the  Bible's  teaching. 

Now  I  wish  you  to  note  one  or  two  points  a  little  further. 

In  the  first  place  the  Bible  is  full  of  historical  inaccuracy. 
I  cannot  go  into  details  this  morning  or  point  them  out  and 
explain  them  :  it  is  not  meet.  Nobody  doubts  it  except 
those  who  are  blindly  determined  to  uphold  a  particular 
theory  concerning  the  Book.  You  need  only  to  read  it  with 
a  little  care  to  find  it  out.  And  it  is  just  what  we  should 
expect.  Not  only  that,  but  take  it  in  the  domain  of  natural 
knowledge.  There  is  no  scientific  knowledge  of  this  uni- 
verse displayed  by  any  of  the  Bible  writers.  Why  should 
there  be  ?     There  was  no  such  knowledge  then  in  the  world. 


Revelation  Natural  and  Progressive  145 

The  order  of  creation  as  outlined  in  the  first  chapters  of 
Genesis  has  been  proved  over  and  over  and  over  again  not 
to  be  the  order  in  which  the  world  was  created  and  not  the 
story  which  science  tells  to-day. 

And,  friends,  do  remember  that  when  you  are  reading  the 
record  that  God  himself  has  left  on  the  earth,  that  he  has 
made,  you  are  reading  God's  word.  When  you  are  reading 
what  some  very  ignorant  people  two  or  three  thousand  years 
ago  thought  of  it,  anonymous  people,  too,  people  concerning 
whose  opportunities  for  knowledge  we  know  nothing  what- 
ever, are  you  going  to  place  those  opinions  in  competition 
with  that  which  God  is  saying  to  us  right  here  to-day  in 
language  absolutely  unmistakable  ? 

The  old  Hebrews  had  no  better  ideas  about  God,  not 
much  better  ideas  about  the  heavens  and  the  earth,  the 
stars  and  the  moons,  than  many  other  people  of  their 
time.  They  teach  us  distinctly  and  definitely  that  the 
earth  is  a  flat  surface  fixed  in  the  midst  of  surrounding 
waters,  that  the  sky  is  a  dome  overhead  as  real  and  as 
solid  as  the  metallic  cover  of  a  dining  platter.  There  is 
not  a  point  where  they  commit  themselves  to  any  opin- 
ion about  the  heavens  or  the  earth,  not  one  where  they 
are  not  wrong. 

Then  let  us  note  the  ethical  teachings  of  the  Old  Testa- 
ment. I  shrink  from  speaking  here ;  but  I  must.  My  task 
demands  it  of  me.  The  Old  Testament  upholds  polygamy; 
it  defends  human  slavery ;  it  teaches  the  doctrine  of  retalia- 
tion ;  it  teaches  and  indorses  moral  ideas  which  I  shrink 
from  speaking  of  here.  It  calls  David  a  man  after  God's 
own  heart.  And  this  David  all  his  life  long  was  a  man  of 
treachery  and  blood ;  and  the  very  last  word  he  spoke  was  to 
command  his  son  and  successor  to  see  to  it  that  one  of  his 


146  Religion  for  To-day 

old  generals  did  not  die  a  natural  death,  but  went  down  with 
bloody  hairs  to  the  grave. 

Is  that  the  ethics  of  Jesus,  of  him  who  said,  "  Father,  for- 
give them,  they  know  not  what  they  do  ? "  Can  you  get  the 
two  ethical  ideas  into  any  sort  of  vital  relationship  to 
each  other  ? 

Do  you  know  that  there  is  a  place  in  the  Old  Testament 
where  God  directly  commands  the  indiscriminate  slaughter 
of  all  the  men,  all  the  married  women,  and  all  the  children 
of  a  particular  city,  and  directs  that  the  young  women  shall 
be  distributed  among  the  brutal  soldiers  ?  Is  that  the  ethics 
of  him  who  stooped  down  and  wrote  on  the  ground,  while 
the  woman  who  was  a  sinner  was  brought  into  his  presence, 
and  at  whose  rebuke  those  who  had  accused  her  silently 
slunk  away  and  said  no  more? 

Friends,  the  ethics  of  many  parts  of  the  Old  Testa- 
ment are  simply  barbarian  ethics,  such  as  you  would 
expect  to  find  among  barbarians,  but  not  the  ethics  of  the 
civilized  world  to-day.  I  have  not  time  to  go  into  any 
longer  detail. 

Then  the  religion  of  the  Old  Testament,  the  first  part  of  the 
Old  Testament,  the  conception  of  God,  God's  nature,  God's 
character,  is  it  the  same,  friends,  as  the  religion  of  the  New 
Testament  or  the  highest  and  grandest  religion  of  the  world 
to-day  ?  God  comes  down  in  human  body,  as  they  tell  such 
tales  of  Jupiter,  walks  around  in  the  garden :  he  comes  to 
Abraham,  sits  down  and  eats  with  him ;  and  yet  the  Bible 
tells  us  "no  man  hath  seen  God  at  any  time."  Note  the 
naive,  beautiful,  child-world  fairy  story,  but  grotesque 
for  an  infallible  book,  of  that  scripture  which  tells  of  God 
hearing  one  day  in  heaven  a  rumor  that  men  were  really 
building  a  tower  in  the  plain  of  Shinar  which  was  to  reach 


Revelation  Natural  and  Progressive  147 

up  to  his  sky ;  and  he  says,  Let  us  go  down,  and  see 
if  it  is  so. 

Is  that  the  God  who  knows  the  secrets  of  every  heart? 
Can  we  believe  that  this  is  our  God  who  is  represented  as 
being  pleased  when  he  smelled  the  smoke  of  burning  flesh, 
the  sacrifice  of  Noah  after  the  flood  ?  Can  we  believe  that 
he  is  the  God  of  Jesus,  a  Spirit  to  be  worshipped  in  spirit 
and  in  truth  ? 

Why,  friends,  it  is  so  plain  that  an  intelligent  scholar  is 
almost  ashamed  to  argue  about  it, —  that  the  Bible  out- 
lines the  pilgrimage  of  man  from  his  lowest  barbaric 
condition  clear  on  and  up  to  Jesus,  a  course  that  it  took 
thousands  of  years  to  travel.  And  the  Bible  is  marked 
with  the  characteristics  of  every  step  of  the  way.  Why 
should  it  not  be? 

And  note,  friends,  that  the  Bible  never  says  one  word  to 
contradict  anything  which  I  am  saying.  It  rather  proclaims 
it  on  every  page. 

What  is  it  that  I  am  antagonizing  ?  What  is  it  that  I  am 
criticising  ?  It  is  the  utterly  baseless  claims  of  the  most  falli- 
ble, prejudiced,  ignorant  kind  of  men, —  that  is  all.  I  cannot 
accept  a  theory  which  certain  people  used  to  hold  concerning 
the  Book ;  but  I  accept  the  Book  with  all  my  heart,  and  love 
it,  and  thank  God  for  it  every  day  I  live. 

Do  not  dare,  then,  any  of  you,  to  misunderstand  me !  Do 
not  dare  to  misrepresent  me,  and  say  that  I  am  criticising 
or  opposing  the  Bible !  I  am  only  criticising  and  opposing 
men's  claims  concerning  the  Bible  which  have  no  founda- 
tion in  history,  no  foundation  in  reason,  are  simply  baseless 
traditions, —  nothing  else  and  nothing  more. 

Another  thing  let  me  say.  Some  day,  friends,  I  am  going 
to  preach  you  a  positive  sermon  about  the  Bible,  why  I  love 


148  Religion  for  To-day 

it,  and  what  it  means  and  what  it  is.  I  cannot  preach  two 
sermons  this  morning ;  and  so  I  must  pass  that  by. 

I  wish  now  to  ask  your  careful,  reverent  consideration  of 
two  points  vital  to  this  whole  discussion. 

The  Bible,  the  oldest  book  in  it,  takes  us  back  only  to 
about  eight  hundred  years  before  Christ.  Up  to  that  time 
there  were  traditions  and  fragments,  parts  of  books  perhaps, 
which  reached  back  possibly  five  hundred  years  earlier. 
But  now  note,  according  to  the  teaching  of  all  the  great 
popular  churches,  the  people  who  have  lived  on  this  earth, 
and  have  never  had  any  revelation  from  God,  have  been 
pouring  a  ceaseless,  hissing  stream  of  souls  into  the  pit  of 
eternal  torture. 

Can  you  believe,  do  you  dare,  looking  God  in  the  face,  to 
believe  that  he  created  his  children  and  made  them  live 
here,  wandering  over  this  little  planet  of  ours  for  two  or 
three  hundred  thousand  years,  and  the  minute  they  died 
sent  them  to  eternal  torture,  and  had  never  sent  to  them  one 
single  word  of  guidance  or  warning  ?  Dare  you  believe  it  ? 
And  they  will  say  in  the  next  breath  that  God  is  good  and 
a  Father ! 

That  is  what  I  was  taught  as  a  child,  is  what  is  taught  in 
every  one  of  the  great  authoritative  creeds  of  Christendom 
to-day ;  and  I  challenge  the  clergy  of  the  United  States,  if 
they  do  not  believe  these  things,  to  be  men,  and  stand  up 
and  demand  that  they  be  taken  out  of  the  creeds. 

Not  only  that,  but  according  to  the  common  theory,  God 
gave  his  word  only  to  Abraham  and  his  descendants,  a  little 
people  inhabiting  a  country  on  the  eastern  coast  of  the 
Mediterranean,  the  whole  of  which  is  not  larger  than  the 
State  of  Massachusetts.  Until  about  two  thousand  years 
ago  God  had  never  sent  any  word  of  revelation  except  to 


Revelation  Natural  and  Progressive  149 

that  little  narrow  strip  on  the  Mediterranean  shore.  And 
though  he  is  almighty  and  all-wise  and  all-good,  and  has 
been  presumably  trying  for  the  last  two  thousand  years  to 
get  this  revelation  known  to  the  rest  of  the  world,  there  is 
not  more  than  a  third  part  of  the  population  of  the  earth 
that  have  ever  heard  of  it. 

Can  you  believe  that  ?  Can  you  believe  it,  and  then  say 
"  Our  Father  who  art  in  heaven  "  ? 

0  friends,  let  us  turn  now  at  the  end,  and  note  what  a 
conception  of  the  word  of  God,  of  the  revelation  of  his 
truth,  so  much  more  magnificent,  so  much  more  honorable 
to  God,  so  much  more  hopeful  to  man  than  this, —  as  much 
so  as  the  dawn  of  the  morning  is  beyond  the  light  of  flitting 
fireflies  in  a  field  at  night, —  we  hold.  God  the  Father  of  all 
his  children  from  the  very  earliest  time,  away  back  and 
down  for  hundreds  of  thousands  of  years  when  the  first 
barbaric  man,  half-animal,  half-human,  climbed  upon  his 
feet,  and  looked  up  with  a  dawning  wonder  in  his  eyes  at 
the  stars,  and  said,  "  Who  made  all  these  \ " 

From  that  time  do  you  not  think  that  God,  who  made 
him,  was  with  him,  holding  him  by  the  hand  and  leading 
him  ?  If  we  have  a  child  sick,  crippled,  incompetent,  men- 
tally inferior,  do  we  not  spend  the  larger  part  of  our  care 
upon  him,  and  leave  the  others  to  look  after  themselves  ? 

Do  we  not  believe  that  God  is  somewhere  near  a  thou- 
sandth part  as  good  as  we  are  ?  Do  you  believe  that  God 
had  left  his  children  wandering,  stumbling,  without  any 
light,  radiating  his  truth  on  one  little  tiny  people,  radiating 
darkness  everywhere  else  from  the  beginning  of  the  world 
until  now  ? 

1  believe,  friends,  that  man  has  been  spelling  out  some 
little  letter  or  word  or  message  of  the  divine  revelation. 


150  Religion  for  To-day 

making  out  some  word  of  God  from  the  very  beginning  of 
the  world  until  to-day,  and  that  each  one  in  any  nation  any- 
where has  been  able  to  read  enough  to  help  him  take  the 
next  step  in  1;hat  eternal  search  of  the  human  soul  for  the 
Father  soul  which  is  the  essence  of  all  true  religion. 

The  universe  is  only  the  living  expression  of  God's  life, 
God's  thought,  God's  power.  Whether  we  know  it  or  not, 
we  face  him,  whichever  way  we  turn.  It  is  God's  word  that 
we  are  studying,  God's  revelation  we  are  reading,  when  we 
find  out  about  these  wonderful  bodies  of  ours,  and  learn 
some,  at  least,  of  the  secrets  of  health.  It  needed  no  divine 
revelation  to  teach  man  the  difference  between  food  and 
poison.  He  could  find  out  by  trying;  and  he  did.  It  is 
experience  that  has  taught  us  in  this  direction ;  and  we 
have  read  only  a  small  part  of  this  marvellous  book  of  the 
human  body  as  yet,  made  so  cunningly.  And,  as  we  read 
each  new  word,  it  is  a  new  word  of  God. 

We  are  following  his  footsteps :  we  are  learning  the  les- 
sons of  how  to  live.  For,  note,  the  only  thing  we  need  in 
this  world  is  to  know  how  to  live,  how  to  come  into  right 
relations  with  God. 

So  you  take  it  in  the  industrial  world.  Read  that  mar- 
vellous history  of  man's  discoveries,  of  man's  inventions, 
and  note  that  every  step  man  has  taken  there  has  been 
simply  reading  some  new  word  of  God.  We  talk  about  this 
"nature"  as  though  it  had  no  God  in  it  and  as  though  we 
did  our  great  things  ourselves. 

Note  what  a  ship-master  does  when  he  wants  to  sail 
across  the  Atlantic.  How  much  can  he  do  without  God.? 
He  goes  into  the  woods  with  metal  which  he  has  discovered, 
which  God  made,  all  the  conditions  and  powers  and  forces 
of  which  are  divine,  and  cuts  down  trees  which  he  brings 


Revelation  Natural  and  Progressive  151 

into  his  ship-yard.  He  raises  the  hull,  builds  it  upon  ways 
that  slope  down  into  the  sea.  When  it  is  finished,  he  asks 
God's  power  of  gravity  to  push  it  out  into  the  ocean  for 
him.  There  God's  waters  take  it  in  their  arms.  They  hold 
it  up.  He  lifts  the  masts,  spreads  his  sails  upon  them ;  and 
then  he  puts  himself  into  right  relation  with  God's  eternal 
forces,  and  God's  winds  blow  the  ship  across  the  sea.  Or 
God's  steam  down  in  the  hold,  used  so  as  to  work  upon  a 
cunning  machine  which  he  has  invented  by  observing  the 
system  of  God's  law  in  that  respect,  pushes  his  ship  over 
the  sea. 

Whatever  way  we  turn,  we  are  dealing  first  hand  with 
God  :  we  are,  as  Kepler  said,  reading  over  his  thoughts 
after  him.  And  every  advance  step  is  only  through  reading 
a  little  more  of  this  eternal,  universal,  progressive  revelation 
of  the  Divine. 

And,  when  you  come  into  the  moral  sphere,  did  man  need 
any  supernatural,  unnatural  revelation  to  teach  him  the  Ten 
Commandments,  to  teach  him  the  law  of  ethics  ?  Do  you 
know,  if  I  had  time  this  morning,  I  could  trace  you  the 
very  beginning  and  birth  of  morals  down  into  the  love  of 
man  and  woman,  into  the  birth  of  the  child,  into  the  begin- 
ning of  human  society. 

Men  learned,  easily  enough,  that,  if  they  were  to  live  to- 
gether in  society  at  all,  murder  must  be  prohibited ;  if  they 
were  to  own  anything,  theft  must  not  be  allowed.  So  you 
may  trace  every  similar  conception  of  the  world  as  plainly, 
as  naturally,  necessarily,  sprung  out  of  human  experience, 
born  of  these  social  relations  of  ours,  none  the  less  God's 
truth, —  more  God's  truth,  assuredly,  because  truth  is  more 
than  speculation  written  in  a  book. 

Concerning  the  birth  of  moral  ideas :  you  travel  all  over 


152  Religion  for  To-day 

this  world,  you  go  one  mile  above  the  sea  anywhere  or  at 
any  particular  level,  and  you  do  not  find  precisely  the  same 
growths  of  tree  and  shrub  and  flower.  But  you  do  find 
similar  growths.  So  you  come  to  any  definite  level  of  the 
advance  of  human  society.  You  do  not  find  the  same 
moral  ideas ;  but  you  find  similar  moral  ideas.  There  is 
hardly  an  ethical  idea  in  the  New  Testament  that  is  original 
with  the  New  Testament.  The  Sermon  on  the  Mount  was 
hundreds  of  years  older  than  Jesus.  Before  Jesus  was  born, 
Hillel  had  said  all  the  law  is  summed  up  in  these  two  com- 
mandments :  Thou  shalt  love  the  Lord  thy  God  with  all  thy 
heart,  and  thy  neighbor  as  thyself. 

All  these  ethical  ideas  sprung  up  out  of  human  expe- 
rience as  the  result  of  the  growth  of  human  society.  And 
so  men's  ideas  about  God  in  every  nation  began  in  barbar- 
ism, men  making  God  in  their  own  image ;  and  they  are 
not  through  with  that  process  yet.  Higher,  finer,  nobler 
conceptions  of  God,  as  men  have  grown  higher  and  finer 
with  nobler  ability  to  think  and  feel ! 

And  so,  friends,  I  present  you,  in  contrast  with  this  lim- 
ited, this  partial,  this  supernatural  conception  of  revelation, 
this  other  one, —  natural,  universal,  unlimited,  embracing 
every  child  of  the  Father ;  and  progressive,  advancing  step 
by  step  with  the  eternal  progress  of  man. 

What  has  been  the  result  of  these  fallible  human  concep- 
tions that  have  been  held  about  the  Bible  ?  These  theories 
have  kindled  martyr  fires :  they  have  riveted  chains  upon 
the  wrists  of  men  and  upon  brain  and  heart.  These  the- 
ories have  given  birth  to  bigotry,  to  hatred,  to  animosities, 
to  self-conceit,  to  self-righteousness. 

The  other  makes  us  able  to  say,  indeed,  the  one  God, 
Father  of  all  his  children.     It  makes  us  humble,  it  makes 


Revelatiojt  Natural  and  Progressive  153 

us  glad,  it  makes  us  hopeful.  It  thrills  us,  it  lifts  us  up 
and  leads  us  on. 

And  so,  friends,  I  bid  you,  sucking  as  the  bee  does  from 
the  flower  all  the  honey,  the  sweetness,  the  truth,  the 
beauty,  there  is  in  this  wonderful  old  book,  not  neglecting 
it,  not  leaving  it  one  side,  to  remember  that  there  are  other 
flowers,  and  that  God's  world,  and,  yes,  God's  universe,  is 
his  garden,  and  that  sweetness  and  truth  and  light  may  be 
found  everywhere. 

Do  not  look  back  to  find  your  God.  Look  up  to  find  him. 
Look  on  for  him.  I  thank  him  for  every  word  he  spoke 
a  thousand  years,  two  thousand,  ten  thousand  years  ago. 
I  thank  him  for  the  word  he  spoke  to  me  this  morning  out 
of  the  gray  sky.  I  thank  him  for  the  brighter  word  which 
he  speaks  out  of  the  sunlight.  And  I  look  with  wide-open 
eyes,  expecting  to  see  some  new  word  of  his  revelation  :  I 
listen  to  catch  the  latest  whisper  that  comes  down  out  of 
his  loving  heart,  out  of  his  brooding  sky ;  and  so  I  wait  and 
watch  and  reverence  and  love  him  to-day  and  evermore. 


IS   GOD    INCARNATE    IN    ONE    MAN    ONLY 
OR   IN    HUMANITY? 


I  SHRINK  from  the  treatment  of  my  theme  this  morning 
more  than  I  have  from  that  of  any  other  in  this  entire  series. 
Not  because  I  have  any  hesitancy  in  expressing  my  opin- 
ion or  because  I  feel  any  doubt  concerning  the  magnificent 
truths  involved,  but  because,  considering  the  state  of  the 
public  mind,  it  is  so  easy  to  be  misunderstood,  so  easy  to 
be  misrepresented,  so  easy  to  find  some  one  who  thinks  that, 
in  attempting  to  state  the  real  truth,  or  what  I  believe  to 
be  the  real  truth,  about  Jesus,  I  am  criticising  him  or  dero- 
gating somewhat  from  the  dignity  of  his  position  or  the 
beauty  of  his  character. 

I  beseech  you,  therefore,  give  me  impartial  and  patient 
hearing,  and  make  up  your  mind  as  to  what  my  position  is 
only  when  I  am  completely  through. 

Perhaps  I  may  be  pardoned  for  recalling  to  your  minds 
the  fact  that  I  preached  as  a  minister  of  Trinitarian 
churches  for  eight  years.  I  was  trained,  lovingly,  rever- 
ently, worshipfully,  in  the  old  thought  about  Jesus ;  and 
yet  never,  even  in  those  days,  did  I  occupy  such  a  position 
of  loving  reverence  towards  the  Nazarene  as  I  occupy  now. 
I  never  reverenced  him  so,  I  never  found  him  such  inspira- 
tion, such  uplifting,  such  guidance,  such  help.  He  is  closer 
to  me  a  thousand-fold  now  than  he  was  in  the  days  of  old. 

So  much  as  to  the  point  of  view  from  which  I  am  to  speak. 


Is  God  incarnate  in   One  Ma7i  only  f  155 

Now,  at  the  outset,  I  wish  to  put  clearly  before  you,  if  I 
may,  the  precise  question  which  we  are  to  discuss.  It  is 
not  as  to  whether  God  incarnates  himself  in  man,  but  as 
to  whether  he  did  incarnate  himself  once,  and  once  only, 
in  one  man  belonging  to  one  race  at  one  period  in  the  his- 
tory of  the  world,  and  as  to  whether  his  divine  incarnation 
is  limited  to  that.  Or,  on  the  other  hand,  has  he  always 
incarnated  himself  t  Is  incarnation  a  universal,  a  progres- 
sive fact?  Did  he  really  make  men  and  women  in  his 
own  image,  so  like  him  that  he  is  always  at  home  in  their 
brains,  in  their  hearts,  in  their  lives  ?  Is  humanity  God's 
child,  his  real  divinely  begotten  child?  and  is  he  progres- 
sively incarnating  himself  in  the  race  ? 

I  wish  now  to  ask  your  attention  for  a  moment  to  the 
actual  state  of  thought  of  the  people  in  whose  minds  the 
ordinary  old  doctrine  of  the  incarnation  sprang  up,  so  that 
you  may  see  the  world  for  a  moment,  if  possible,  as  they 
saw  it,  comprehend  the  problem  as  it  presented  itself  to 
them. 

You  must  forget,  then,  all  modern  discoveries  ;  you  must 
forget  all  the  magnificent  reach  of  our  knowledge  of  this 
great  universe ;  you  must  picture  this  earth  as  a  little  flat 
affair,  heaven  just  above  the  blue  dome,  God  an  outlined 
being  sitting  there  on  a  throne.  You  must  think  of  this 
world  as  something  apart  from  God,  something  that  he 
made,  as  a  carpenter  builds  a  house.  Put  it  before  you  so 
that  nature  and  natural  law  and  the  working  of  natural 
forces  are  something  entirely  external  to  God,  that  he  con- 
trols the  world  from  a  distance,  that  he  can  interfere  with 
the  working  of  it  if  he  pleases,  and  so  produce  what  is  called 
a  miracle. 

You   must   think   of    God   as    a   being   apart,    quite   re- 


156  Religion  f 07^  To-day 

moved  from  his  world, — what  Carlyle  used  to  refer  to  as 
an  "  absentee  God."  You  must  think,  then,  of  this  gulf  be- 
tween humanity  and  God,  and  of  the  necessity  that  lay  in 
the  minds  of  the  people  who  first  dreamed  out  this  special 
form  of  the  doctrine  of  incarnation  that  somehow  the  gulf 
between  humanity  and  God  must  be  bridged.  And  there 
was  only  one  way  in  that  kind  of  universe  to  bridge  it, —  by 
miracle,  by  creating  a  being  who  should  be  neither  man  nor 
God,  but  partly  both,  or  wholly  both,  if  you  choose ;  an  in- 
comprehensible being  that  should  bridge  over  and  so  unite 
these  separate  lives,  God  on  the  one  hand,  the  world  of  men 
on  the  other. 

This  was  the  problem  that  was  in  the  minds  of  the  people 
when  this  doctrine  of  incarnation  sprang  up. 

Now  I  wish  to  note  for  a  little  while  the  beliefs  of  the 
disciples,  the  belief  of  Jesus  himself  as  to  his  own  nature, 
so  far  as  it  is  recorded,  and  then  note  how  naturally,  how 
inevitably,  the  ordinary  doctrine  of  the  incarnation  grew. 
Then  I  shall  ask  you  to  note  what  seems  to  me  so  unspeak- 
ably grander  than  that,  a  doctrine  that  does  not  deny  that, 
mind  you, —  a  doctrine  that  affirms  a  thousand-fold  more 
than  it  denies,  that  includes  all  the  divinity  there  was  in 
the  Son  of  Mary,  and  includes  unspeakably  more. 

Suppose  this  were  entirely  a  new  idea  to  us,  and  we  were 
seeking  to  find  what  ground  there  is  for  holding  it.  Of 
course,  we  should  say,  There  is  no  ground  whatever  except 
what  we  can  find  in  this  book.  And  of  course  we  must  say, 
to  be  perfectly  fair  and  honest  with  ourselves,  that,  whatever 
we  may  find  to  be  the  beliefs  of  the  writers  of  these  books, 
we  are  not  absolutely  obliged  to  agree  with  them. 

Does  it  seem  strange  to  you,  for  example,  to  say  this  ?  I 
am  intensely  interested,  if    I   may,  to  find   out  what   Paul 


Is  God  incarnate  in  One  Man,  only  f  157 

thought ;  but  the  world  is  nearly  two  thousand  years  older 
than  it  was  then,  and  there  has  been  an  expanding  of  knowl- 
edge and  discovery  in  every  direction  so  great  as  to  be 
almost  immeasurable.  Is  it  strange,  then,  that  I  should  not 
feel  obliged  to  agree  with  Paul  in  his  opinions  on  every  sub- 
ject ?  I  know  he  was  wrong  in  any  number  of  directions. 
I  know  at  the  same  time  that  he  was  one  of  the  grandest 
and  most  heroic  men,  and  one  to  whom  we  owe  an  unspeak- 
able debt. 

But  let  us  see  what  doctrine  is  really  taught  concerning 
the  person,  the  character,  the  office,  of  Jesus. 

Who  is  our  first  witness  ?  Paul.  For  you  must  note  — 
and  it  will  throw  a  great  deal  of  light  on  the  teaching  of  the 
New  Testament,  if  you  remember  it  —  that  the  first  writer 
in.the  New  Testament,  the  one  that  stands  nearest  to  Jesus 
in  point  of  time,  is  the  apostle  Paul.  His  Epistles  were 
written  before  either  of  the  Gospels  came  into  its  present 
shape. 

Now  does  Paul  teach  that  Jesus  is  identical  with  the  God 
who  created  the  universe  ?  Nothing  of  the  sort.  So  far  as 
any  record  appears,  Paul  has  never  heard  anything  about  the 
miraculous  conception :  he  nowhere  refers  to  it.  It  would 
have  given  him  tremendous  power  in  his  preaching  if  he  had 
known  it  and  believed  it,  and  could  have  proclaimed  it;  but 
he  nowhere  alludes  to  it. 

But  note  right  here,  in  passing, —  for  I  shall  not  have  time 
to  go  into  it  at  any  length, —  suppose  Paul  had  believed  that 
Jesus  was  miraculously  born.  There  are  thousands  of  peo- 
ple who  take  it  for  granted  that  that  is  the  same  thing  as 
proving  that  Jesus  is  divine.  If  God  is  to  work  a  miracle, 
and  a  child  is  to  be  born  without  a  human  father,  would 
that  prove  that  the  child  is  anything  more  than  human  ? 


158  Religion  for  To-day 

Suppose  he  had  wrought  a  similar  miracle  in  the  animal 
realm,  a  miracle  anywhere,  so  that  there  should  be  special 
and  miraculous  generation  and  birth :  it  would  prove  noth- 
ing as  to  the  nature  and  character  of  the  creature  so  born. 
This  simply  in  passing. 

Paul  teaches  that  Jesus  was  the  second  Adam,  the  head 
of  the  new  order  of  a  spiritual  humanity.  He  teaches,  if 
you  please,  that  he  was  supernatural,  that  he  was  pre-exist- 
ent ;  that  he  was  sent  into  this  world  to  perform  a  special 
mission,  to  save  mankind.  But  that  does  not  prove  at  all 
that  he  was  the  equal  of  the  Father. 

Suppose  he  was  "  the  first-born  of  every  creature."  Note 
the  word  "creature."  Suppose  he  was  created  before  an 
angel  had  ever  lived.  Suppose  he  had  spent  what  is  practi- 
cally an  eternity  in  close  communion  with  the  Father.  Sup- 
pose he  had  been  the  head  and  leader  of  all  the  angels. 
That  does  not  make  him  God. 

Mathematicians  tell  us  that  you  may  pile  up  numbers  year 
after  year,  and  make  the  largest  statement  you  can  in  fig- 
ures, and  that,  when  you  are  done,  you  have  not  even  begun 
to  approach  infinity.  There  is  an  infinite  remove  between 
the  infinite  itself  and  anything  finite. 

Paul  does  not  teach  any  doctrine,  then,  of  the  Godhead 
of  Jesus, —  nothing  of  the  kind  to  be  found  in  him. 

Then  he  says  that,  at  the  end  Jesus  is  to  deliver  up  the 
kingdom  to  God,  even  the  Father,  and  God  is  to  be  all  and 
in  all. 

Now  let  us  turn  and  see  what  Jesus  is  reported  to  have 
said  about  himself.  Of  course,  friends,  you  must  under- 
stand I  cannot  quote  passage  after  passage.  I  will  make 
these  general  statements ;  and  you  can  take  up  your  New 
Testament  when  you  are  at  home,  and  study  it,  read  it  over 
and  see  if  what  I  say  is  not  true. 


Is  God  incarnate  in  One  Man  only?  159 

Jesus  is  nowhere  even  reported  to  have  claimed  to  be 
God,  in  any  word  which  the  scholarship  of  the  world  is 
agreed  in  regarding  as  his  authentic  utterance.  Always  it 
is  "  the  Father."  He  prays  to  the  Father,  he  depends  on 
the  Father.  When  he  claims  to  exercise  any  special  power, 
he  says,  This  power  is  conferred  on  me  by  the  Father. 
Then,  when  it  comes  to  the  matter  of  being  able  to  lay 
down  his  life  and  take  it  up  again,  he  says.  This  is  the 
gift  of  the  Father.  Everything,  all  the  way  through,  is  a 
recognition  of  the  fact  that  he  is  the  son  of  the  Father, 
comes  as  the  Father's  messenger  to  declare  the  Father's 
word  and  execute  the  Father's  will.  That  which  he  speaks, 
he  says,  he  speaks  not  of  himself :  he  speaks  that  which  the 
Father  has  commissioned  him  to  say.  He  does  not  claim 
even  anything  approaching  superhuman  knowledge.  When 
the  disciples  asked  him  a  certain  question,  he  says,  I  do 
not  know :  only  the  Father  knows  that.  And,  when  some 
of  them  ascribe  to  him  special  goodness,  he  says.  Why  do 
you  call  me  good  ?  there  is  none  good  but  one,  that  is  God. 
His  goodness  was  derived,  reflected  from  the  Father. 

In  that  passage  which  I  referred  to,  I  think,  once  before 
this  winter,  that  is  frequently  quoted,  where  Jesus  is  repre- 
sented as  saying,  "  I  and  my  Father  are  one,"  he  says  in 
the  immediate  context  that  the  disciples  are  capable  of 
being  one  with  him  and  the  Father  as  he  is  one  with  the 
Father.  So  you  see  it  proves  too  much  if  we  depend  upon 
that  passage.  You  can  find  none  anywhere  in  which  Jesus 
does  not  frankly  recognize  the  fact  that  he  is  the  son  of  the 
Father,  having  committed  to  him  a  special  work,  engaged  in 
this  divine  service  for  his  fellow-men.  And,  when  you  turn 
from  the  words  that  are  put  into  the  lips  of  the  Nazarene 
himself  to  the  testimony  of  the  other  disciples,  what  do  you 
find? 


i6o  Religion  for  To-day 

I  have  already  referred  to  Paul  for  the  simple  reason  that 
his  testimony  comes  first.  What  do  the  other  disciples  say  ? 
Nowhere,  friends,  is  there  any  clear  testimony  even  to  their 
belief  that  Jesus  was  other  than  a  nature  derived  from  God 
and  having  committed  to  him  a  special  service  to  be  ren- 
dered here  among  men. 

Let  me  hasten  to  speak  of  one  case  because  it  is  the  ex- 
tremest  that  any  one  can  suggest.  I  am  aware  of  the  word 
in  the  prologue  in  the  Gospel  that  is  called  "According  to 
John,"  where  it  says,  "The  Word  was  made  flesh,  and  dwelt 
among  us,"  and  this  Word  was  with  God,  etc. 

Now  let  me  suggest  to  you  one  thing.  We  do  not  know 
who  the  author  of  this  Gospel  may  be,  we  do  not  know  the 
value  of  his  opinion  if  we  could  cross-question  his  testimony 
to-day;  but  we  do  know  this, —  that  at  about  the  time  this 
Gospel  appeared  there  was  in  vogue  throughout  the  early 
Church  a  system  of  philosophy  called  "  Gnosticism,"  from  a 
Greek  word  which  means  "  to  know."  They  were  the  people 
who  claimed  to  know  —  the  opposites  of  the  agnostics  of 
our  time.  These  people  say  they  do  not  know  :  the  gnostics 
said  they  did. 

The  Gospel  of  John  bears  many  traces  of  this  gnostic 
philosophy.  It  has  in  it  some  of  the  technical  terms  of  this 
philosophy,  which  show  that  the  writer  was  familiar  with  it ; 
as  the  use  of  the  phrase  "  survival  of  the  fittest "  in  any 
book  would  show  to  future  ages  that  the  writer  was  familiar 
with  the  philosophy  of  Evolution. 

Now  what  did  these  gnostics  believe  ?  They  believed  that 
God  was  a  spirit,  of  an  infinite  remove  from  matter.  They 
believed  that  all  matter  was  evil,  essentially  and  necessarily. 
They  believed,  therefore,  that  the  infinite  God  could  not, 
being  perfect  purity,  have  anything  to  do  with  matter.     So, 


Is  God  incarnate  in  One  Man  only  f  i6l 

when  the  gnostics  would  have  the  world  created,  they  de- 
clared that  it  was  not  the  work  of  the  primal,  infinite  Deity, 
but  the  work  of  a  demiurge, —  a  sort  of  deputy,  sub-deity, — 
somebody  appointed  by  him  as  his  agent  to  create  the  world. 

So,  if  you  should  find  in  a  gnostic  fragment  of  writing  the 
statement  that  Jesus  was  the  creator  of  the  world,  that 
would  be  proof  beyond  question  that  the  man  who  wrote 
it  did  not  believe  that  he  was  God,  because,  as  I  said,  it 
was  a  cardinal  doctrine  of  the  gnostics  that  God  was  not  the 
world  creator. 

So,  when  you  find  this  doctrine  in  the  early  part  of  the 
Gospel  of  John,  along  with  gnostic  phrases  in  a  book  sub- 
ject to  gnostic  influences,  you  are  to  interpret  it  in  the  light 
of  the  prevailing  ideas  of  the  time. 

You  find  nowhere,  then, —  I  must  content  myself  with 
this  general  statement, —  nowhere  in  the  New  Testament 
any  doctrine  of  the  absolute  deity  of  Jesus. 

Neander,  the  famous  German  historian  of  the  Church, 
may  be  presumed  to  know  what  he  was  saying,  and  his 
testimony  is  without  bias  in  this  direction,  for  he  was 
thoroughly  orthodox  in  his  belief ;  but  he  makes  the  frank 
admission  that  the  doctrine  of  the  Trinity  was  not  one  of 
the  fundamental  doctrines  of  the  Christian  Church,  as  is 
plainly  evidenced,  he  said,  from  the  fact  that  it  is  nowhere 
explicitly  taught  in  any  part  of  the  New  Testament. 

This  is  the  testimony  of  the  orthodox  and  scholarly 
historian,  Neander. 

Now,  then,  let  us  pass  to  the  belief  of  the  Fathers  of  the 
Church.  We  find  ourselves  in  the  second  century,  between 
the  years  loo  and  200.  What  do  we  find  there?  Lac- 
tantius,  Tertullian,  Origen, —  man  after  man  of  those  whose 
names    are  familiar  as  the  representative    Fathers   of   the 


1 62  Religion  for  To-day 

second  century  of  the  Church, —  you  find  them,  without 
exception,  teaching  the  doctrine  of  the  derived  and  sub- 
ordinate nature  of  Jesus.  Justin  Martyr,  one  of  the  most 
famous  of  them  all,  goes  so  far  as  explicitly  to  say  that 
our  Lord  Jesus  had  his  own  Lord,  God  the  Father,  who  had 
created  him,  and  to  whom  he  was  subordinate. 

TertuUian,  a  man  passionate,  fiery,  not  specially  scholarly, 
is  the  first  one  of  the  Fathers  who  suggested  the  doctrine  of 
the  Trinity ;  and  he  himself  testifies  that  it  was  a  surprise 
and  a  shock  to  everybody  at  that  time. 

The  doctrine  of  the  Trinity  in  such  form  as  to  declare 
that  Jesus  was  of  the  same  nature  as  God  did  not  take 
shape,  as  I  had  occasion  to  tell  you  a  few  Sundays  ago, 
until  the  year  325,  at  the  Council  at  Nice,  where  it  was  pro- 
pounded and  championed  by  Athanasius.  It  was  only  in 
the  year  381  that  the  Emperor  Theodosius  packed  a  coun- 
cil, only  one  hundred  and  fifty  bishops,  chiefly  selected 
by  himself,  to  declare  what  has  come  to  be  recognized 
now  as  the  doctrine  of  the  Trinity.  He  had  violently 
driven  all  the  bishops  and  ecclesiastics  who  did  not  hold 
this  doctrine  out  of  the  Eastern  Church,  and  then  he 
called  this  council,  selected  by  himself,  to  legalize  what  he 
had  already  done. 

Saint  Augustine  is  the  first  one  of  the  Fathers  who  teaches 
in  perfectly  clear  fashion,  and  consistently,  the  doctrine 
concerning  the  person  of  Jesus  which  is  now  held  in  the 
Westminster  Confession  of  Faith  and  the  ordinary  Prot- 
estant formulas.  And  he  himself  says  that  he  had  not  seen 
the  matter  clearly  until  he  had  discovered  the  doctrine  of 
the  Logos  in  some  Platonic  writing. 

It  can  be  traced, —  the  growth  of  this  idea,  as  a  pagan  idea, 
and  not  as  one  that  was  taught  in  the  Gospels,  or  the  New 


Is  God  incarnate  in  One  Man  only  ?  163 

Testament,  or  that  was  natural  to  the  disciples  or  to  Jesus 
himself.  For  the  Jewish  mind  always  looked  upon  this 
idea  with  abhorrence  as  blasphemy ;  and  the  gospel  has 
never  found  any  acceptance  among  the  Jewish  people,  and 
for  that  very  reason. 

Now,  friends,  if, —  and  I  wish  you  to  note  the  importance 
of  this  suggestion, —  if  nowhere  else  in  the  history  of  the 
world  had  there  been  any  claim  made  that  any  human  being 
was  supernaturally  born  or  was  an  incarnation  of  God,  then 
it  would  indeed  be  very,  very  striking  that  such  a  claim 
should  have  been  made  on  the  part  of  the  Church,  and  for 
the  person  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth.     But  what  are  the  facts  "i 

Why,  when  I  study  early  church  history,  the  only  thing 
that  surprises  me  is  that  it  took  three  hundred  and  twenty- 
five  years  for  the  doctrine  to  grow.  I  wonder  that  it  did  not 
appear  earlier.  For,  as  we  look  back  and  trace  the  thoughts 
of  men  concerning  questions  like  these,  what  do  we  find  ? 

We  find  that  among  barbaric  people  in  nearly  all  the 
pagan  nations  of  the  world  the  idea  of  God  appearing  in 
flesh  has  been  one  of  the  very  commonest  from  the  first. 
And  he  has  not  confined  himself  to  men.  He  has  appeared 
in  fishes ;  he  has  appeared  in  the  form  of  birds ;  he  has 
appeared  in  the  form  of  almost  every  kind  of  animal,  if  we 
are  to  believe  the  testimony  of  those  who  claim  to  represent 
this  type  of  religion  or  that.  Note,  for  example,  that  the 
number  of  incarnations  of  God  have  been  almost  countless ; 
and  some  of  the  stories  told  in  regard  to  the  supernatural 
birth,  the  marvels  of  the  infancy,  of  the  childhood,  are  so 
strikingly  similar  to  those  that  are  told  about  Jesus  that  it  is 
almost  impossible  for  us  to  believe  that  they  had  a  separate 
origin. 

There  have  been  no  end  of  appearances  of  the  Buddha ; 


164  Religion  for  To-day 

and  still  they  are  to  come.  Whenever  the  world  goes  very 
wrong,  degenerates,  plunging  down  into  evil,  then,  according 
to  the  belief  of  the  Oriental  nations,  God  is  to  come  and 
rescue  and  lift  up  his  world  again,  and  bring  it  back  to 
himself. 

And,  as  I  had  occasion  to  tell  you  the  other  day,  among 
the  Roman  people  as  well  as  among  the  Greeks,  the  doctrine 
of  apotheosis,  of  either  the  gods  coming  down  in  the  form  of 
men  or  men  being  lifted  up  to  share  the  conditions  of  the 
gods,  was  the  commonest  of  all  beliefs. 

Read  the  poems  of  Homer,  the  great  poem  of  the  Latin 
race,  the  JEneid  of  Virgil,  and  you  will  find  that  the 
gods  were  forever  appearing  in  the  form  of  men,  having 
human  passions,  engaging  in  human  conflicts,  and  deciding 
human  battles.  And  these  ideas,  I  say,  are  as  natural  as 
the  growth  of  a  blade  of  grass  in  the  park  in  the  month  of 
May. 

Shall  we  wonder,  then,  that  the  loving  admiration  that 
gathered  around  the  person  and  work  of  Jesus  should  take 
this  form  ?  Shall  we  wonder  that  philosophical  speculation 
should  at  last  result  in  this  doctrine  in  its  attempt  to  bridge 
over  the  gulf  between  God  and  his  human  world.?  I  say  the 
marvel  of  it  is  not  that  the  doctrine  grew  up,  but  that  it  was 
so  long  in  growing. 

Now  then,  friends,  I  wish  to  suggest  one  or  two  thoughts 
concerning  the  implications  of  this  old  doctrine, —  not  the 
doctrine  that  I  am  going  to  present  to  you  in  a  moment. 

You  know  the  doctrine  of  the  exclusive  incarnation  of 
God  in  Jesus  is  a  part  of  a  hopeless  and  a  terribly  unjust 
scheme  of  the  world.  The  pity,  the  love,  the  tenderness,  of 
Jesus,  have  been  dwelt  upon  in  all  ages.  And,  if  he  were  a 
man,  a  divine  man,  then  the  pity  and  the  tenderness  and 
the  love  are  something  superb  and  grand. 


Is  God  incarnate  in   One  Man  only?  165 

But  think  a  moment,  friends.  I  can  only  hint  it,  turn  a 
flash-light  on  the  darkness  for  a  moment.  Let  us  look  at 
this  matter  of  the  divine  mercy.  What  is  the  doctrine  ? 
God  created  a  world  that  did  not  ask  to  be  created.  He, 
omnipotent  and  all-wise,  created  the  world ;  and  he  launched 
it  forth  in  space,  and  then  either  did  not  wish  to  or  was  not 
able  to  prevent  its  falling  into  the  hands  of  the  Devil  almost 
immediately.  And  then  he  left  that  world  swinging  on  its 
darkened  way  for  two  or  three  hundred  thousand  years, 
and  all  the  people  dropping  off  of  it  one  after  another  into 
the  abyss,  with  no  light,  not  a  word  of  hope,  no  sign  of  pity, 
no  salvation,  until  by  and  by,  late,  after  thousands  on 
thousands  of  years,  he  comes  and  gives  a  whisper  of  his 
revelation  to  one  little  people,  and  then  four  thousand 
years  later  comes  down  in  his  own  person  to  save  the  world, 
save  a  few  people,  save  the  elect. 

Is  that  to  be  held  up  to  us  as  typical  of  divine  mercy  ? 

Let  me  give  you  an  illustration.  Suppose  a  shipmaster 
here  in  New  York  should  send,  starting  for  Liverpool  across 
the  Atlantic,  a  ship  freighted  and  filled  with  passengers 
that  he  knew  would  go  down  before  it  was  half-way  over. 
And  then,  after  it  was  out  of  sight  of  land,  he  should  send  a 
ship  to  the  rescue,  that  should  get  there  just  in  time  to  save 
one  in  fifty  of  the  passengers  while  the  rest  were  hopelessly 
engulfed. 

Which  would  you  do  ?  Would  you  praise  a  man  like  that 
for  his  mercy,  or  would  you  think  of  what  would  be  the  un- 
speakable infamy  of  the  first  launching  of  the  ship  for  such 
a  doom  ? 

Mind  you,  I  am  not  attacking  the  work  of  God.  I  am 
attacking  unjust,  infamous  representations  of  what  God  is 
said  to  have  done,  but  which  he  never  did. 


1 66  Religion  for  To-day 

That  doctrine  of  Jesus  is  not  a  part  of  a  scheme  of  divine 
and  tender  mercy,  if  you  judge  it  from  the  point  of  view  of 
the  Westminster  Confession.  It  is  something  unspeakably 
horrible,  too  cruel  to  be  put  into  words.  Then,  if  that  be 
true,  the  coming  of  Jesus  as  God  into  the  world  has  been 
the  most  lamentable  failure  that  human  history  has  ever 
known.  God  himself  trying  to  save  the  world,  omnipotent, 
all-wise  !  and,  since  he  came  down  two  thousand  years  ago, 
he  has  been  at  work  as  hard  as  he  could,  presumably,  to 
save  men !  And,  as  I  told  you  the  other  day,  not  a  third 
part  of  the  people  on  this  little  planet  have  ever  heard  any- 
thing of  it.  And  the  most  of  those,  the  most  intelligent  of 
those  who  have  heard  it,  do  not  believe  a  word  of  it.  If  he 
did  it,  he  has  not  given  enough  evidence  of  it,  so  that  the 
people  who  are  seeking  earnestly  for  the  truth  can  find  it. 
If  that  be  true,  it  is  the  most  lamentable  failure  that  the 
history  of  the  world  has  ever  known. 

But,  on  the  other  theory, — Jesus  a  man,  a  divine  man,  our 
brother,  born  like  us,  to  die  like  us,  to  search  and  seek  and 
trust  and  pray  to  God  like  us,  and  give  himself  to  the 
service  of  his  kind  like  us, —  then  it  is  one  of  the  unpar- 
alleled successes  of  the  world,  infinitely  full  of  its  story  of 
divine  tenderness  and  mercy,  as  I  shall  show  you  in  a 
moment. 

One  other  point  I  wish  to  call  your  attention  to  before  I 
come  to  my  own  positive  statement. 

Consider  the  problem  for  a  moment.  Suppose  God, — 
and  I  am  talking  in  this  free  way  now  from  the  point  of 
view  of  the  old  ideas, —  a  God  that  works  outside  of  things, 
and  rules  them  as  he  pleases, —  suppose  God  should  attempt 
to  put  as  much  as  he  could  of  himself  into  a  man.  What 
would  be  the  result?     Consider  carefully,  think  earnestly  1 


Is  God  incarnate  in  One  Man  only  f  167 

Could  he  produce,  as  the  result  of  an  effort  like  that,  any- 
thing else,  anything  other,  anything  more  than  a  perfect 
man?  If  he  broke  over  the  limits  anywhere,  this  being 
would  cease  to  be  human,  would  he  not  ? 

If  God  should  fill  a  man  with  himself,  the  result  would  be 
simply  a  perfect  man.  He  could  do  no  more  :  he  could  do 
no  other.  How,  for  example,  would  anybody  be  able  to 
prove  that  a  man  walking  this  aisle  was  God?  Suppose 
John,  the  beloved  disciple,  should  appear  to  us  to-day,  and 
should  make  affidavit,  signed  with  his  own  name  before  a 
notary,  that  he  believed  that  Jesus  was  God.  How  could  he 
prove  it  ?  What  evidence  could  he  give  that  he  was  any- 
thing more  than  a  man,  or  that  this  opinion  of  his  was 
anything  other  than  his  personal  opinion  ? 

If  somebody  should  come  to  us  to-day,  and  say  that  he 
really  believed  that  such  and  such  a  person  was  God, 
incarnate  in  any  supernatural  and  miraculous  sense,  is 
there  one  of  us  who  could  believe  it  or  pay  any  attention 
to  such  a  statement?  Why,  then,  should  we  pay  any 
attention  to  similar  statements,  because  they  are  two 
thousand  years  old,  and  were  made  by  people  we  know 
nothing  about? 

Think  of  it,  friends,  for  a  moment,  and  see  where  you  are, 
on  the  basis  of  an  honest,  reasonable  attempt  to  find  the 
truth. 

Now,  friends,  let  me  come  and  state  what  I  believe  to  be 
the  magnificent,  inclusive,  universal,  progressive  reality. 
And  I  need  here  now  at  the  outset  of  this  part  of  my  theme 
to  call  your  attention  to  the  universe  as  we  know  it  to-day. 
I  pictured  the  old  universe  out  of  the  old  doctrine  of  the 
world.  I  want  you  to  note  the  new  universe  which  is  the 
field  and  scene  of  the  new  revelation  of  God.     I  want  you  to 


1 68  Religion   for  To-day 

think  how  modern  it  is.  We  are  apt,  without  thinking  much 
about  it,  to  project  our  ideas  away  back  into  an  indefinite 
past.  Why,  it  is  only  within  two  or  three  hundred  years 
that  we  have  begun  to  have  gUmpses  of  this  wonderful  uni- 
verse in  which  is  now  our  home, —  only  two  or  three  hundred 
years !  And  a  large  part  of  the  revelation  of  God  has  come 
to  us  during  your  lifetime  and  mine.  Do  you  know  how 
modern  it  is,  and  what  is  this  modern  thought  ? 

The  universe  is  no  longer  a  piece  of  mechanism  away  from 
God  —  nature  governed  by  natural  forces  and  in  accordance 
with  natural  law,  while  over  here  somewhere  is  a  supernatu- 
ral and  divine  world  entirely  separated  from  it !  That  idea, 
friends,  is  utterly  gone  from  the  minds  of  intelligent  men 
and  women. 

What  is  the  universe  ?  Note  first  the  significance  of  the 
word  I  am  using.  In  ancient  times  they  believed  in  any 
number  of  antagonistic  forces,  confused  and  working  against 
each  other.  Now,  we  know,  from  the  dust  under  our  feet 
to  the  light  just  starting  from  some  star  on  its  thirty  millions 
of  years  of  journey — we  know  that  this  is  a  uniYQVse,  not  a 
multitudinous  manifestation  of  antagonistic  forces,  no  dual 
thing, —  a  universe.     One  law,  one  life  ! 

And  we  know  that  the  old  antagonism  between  matter  and 
spirit  is  fading  away.  Pursue  a  particle  of  matter,  and  you 
find  yourself  lost  in  invisible  and  intangible  force,  which  is 
what  we  call  spirit.  No  one  can  tell  where  one  leaves  off 
and  the  other  begins.  It  is  one  manifestation  of  the  divine, 
—  matter  and  spirit,  too. 

And  matter  is  no  longer  something  impure.  It  is  some- 
thing perfect,  divine  in  all  its  parts  and  fragments.  It  is  a 
universe,  then.  It  is  one  substance.  We  know  now  that 
this  which  we  call  matter  is  seen  in  the  glittering  stars  over 


Is  God  ijicarnate  in   One  Man  only?  169 

our  head  and  the  roadway  that  we  trample  under  our  feet. 
It  is  one  substance;  and  we  know  that  all  these  various 
elements  that  we  talk  about  are  coming  to  be  considered  by 
the  deepest  thinkers  as  modifications  of  one  substance.  We 
know  that  all  the  forces  about  which  we  speak  have  been 
demonstrated  to  be  only  modifications  of  one  force.  And 
we  know  that  life  is  one  life,  only  one  life  in  the  universe, 
and  that  life  God ;  and  there  is  one  humanity.  Not  variety 
of  races, —  one  humanity,  one  family,  one  child  of  God.  So 
we  have  found  out  at  last.  And  this  is  unquestioned  revela- 
tion, the  word  of  God  spoken  to  us  in  demonstrably  clear  and 
unmistakable  tones. 

Herbert  Spencer  says, —  and  I  wish  you  to  note  the 
mighty  significance  of  it, —  he  says  it  is  the  last  and  deep- 
est and  highest  word  of  science  that  the  power,  the  force, 
which  is  manifested  in  the  universe  outside  of  us,  is  the 
same  force  precisely  as  that  which  wells  up  in  ourselves 
under  the  form  of  consciousness, —  one  God,  one  life,  one 
substance,  one  God  and  Father  of  us  all ! 

This  is  the  kind  of  universe  we  are  in  to-day.  And  note, 
friends,  that  gulf  between  a  spiritual  God  and  an  unspiritual 
matter  that  the  early  Church  tried  to  bridge, —  and  the  old 
unused  and  unusable  bridge  is  left  still  in  the  creeds, — 
that  gulf  is  not  there,  there  is  no  such  gulf.  There  is  no 
separation  by  so  much  as  a  millionth  part  of  the  width  of 
a  hair  between  God  and  his  children. 

You  know  what  I  believe,  friends, —  I  believe  it  has  been 
demonstrated  beyond  question,  by  scientific  revelations  of 
the  modern  world  :  I  believe  in  the  divinity  of  man  and 
the  humanity  of  God.  I  do  not  believe  there  is  any  differ- 
ence in  kind  between  our  souls  and  the  world's  soul. 

Even  Dr.  Lyman  Abbott  has  dared  to  say  that  he  be- 


.170  Religion  for  To-day 

lieves  there  is  no  difference  in  kind  between  God  and 
Jesus  and  man.  He  says  that  God  is  man  plus  infinity, 
and  man  is  God  minus  infinity.  I  believe  this  is  magnifi- 
cently true. 

Now  see  what  the  upshot  of  it  is,  a  grand  doctrine  of 
incarnation  that  we  are  compelled  to  hold  to-day  and  in  the 
coming  time.  Let  us  look,  if  you  will,  at  a  pebble  stone 
in  the  street.  That  could  not  exist  one  instant  but  for  the 
present  vital  life  of  God.  And  God  is  incarnate  in  that 
stone;  that  is,  that  stone  contains  just  as  much  of  the 
divine  life  and  power  and  wisdom  as,  being  a  stone,  it  is 
capable  of  holding. 

Take  a  crystal.  Here  you  have  a  beautiful  organization 
which  you  do  not  find  in  the  pebble.  The  crystal,  again,  is 
an  incarnation  of  God,  holding  just  as  much  of  the  divine 
wisdom  and  force  and  love  and  beauty  as,  being  a  crystal, 
it  is  capable  of  holding. 

Come  next  to  vegetable  life,  the  first  form,  a  grass-blade, 
that  you  will  notice  on  your  walk  home  after  service  this 
morning.  That  grass-blade  is  God  incarnate :  there  is 
just  as  much  of  God  in  the  blade  of  grass  as  the  blade  of 
grass  is  capable  of  holding  and  expressing.  More  of  it  in 
the  rose,  merely  because  the  rose  is  capable  of  holding 
more, —  the  fragrance,  the  poetry  of  God. 

Then,  when  you  come  higher  yet,  to  the  amoeba,  one  of 
the  lowest  forms  of  animal  life,  there  is  sensation  and 
movement,  the  germ  of  that  which  is  in  us.  There  again 
is  God  incarnate,  just  as  much  of  God  as  the  amoeba  is 
capable  of  holding  and  expressing. 

And,  as  you  climb  up,  following  through  the  fishes,  the 
reptiles,  the  birds,  the  animals,  and  up  to  man,  each  in  its 
degree   is  a  divine   incarnation,    holding   and   manifesting 


Is  God  incarnate  in   One  Maii  only  f  lyi 

just  as  much  of  God  as  it  is  capable  of  containing  and 
showing  forth. 

Now  let  us  note,  if  you  will,  a  few  illustrations  to  em- 
phasize this  magnificent  truth,  from  the  different  depart- 
ments of  our  human  life. 

We  look  at  Jesus ;  and  we  see  in  him  the  glory  of  God,  the 
divine  speaking  on  his  lips,  ministering  with  his  hands, 
going  on  errands  of  goodness  in  his  feet,  shining  out  of  his 
eyes.  We  say  that  is  divine.  But  are  we  to  follow  the  ex- 
ample of  the  creed-makers,  and  draw  a  distinction  without  a 
difference,  and  say  that  precisely  similar  things  in  other 
lives,  in  other  nations,  in  other  ages,  are  only  natural,  only 
human,  not  divine  ? 

For  example,  we  say  the  golden  rule  is  divine  as  it  fell 
from  the  lips  of  Jesus.  What  was  it,  pray,  when  it  fell  from 
the  lips  of  Confucius  four  hundred  years  before  ?  Was  it 
only  human,  was  it  wicked,  was  it  wrong,  was  it  just  natural  ? 
Is  the  same  idea,  the  same  thought,  the  same  love,  in  China 
undivine,  and  only  divine  in  Palestine  ? 

Jesus  said,  "  Thou  shalt  love  the  Lord  thy  God  with  all 
thy  heart,  and  thy  neighbor  as  thyself :  on  these  two  com- 
mandments hang  all  the  law  and  the  prophets."  We  say, 
Divine,  wonderful,  glorious !  Was  it  less  divine  when 
Hillel  said  it  before  Jesus  was  bom,  in  almost  precisely 
the  same  words  ? 

We  read  in  the  New  Testament;  and  our  hearts  are 
touched,  and  they  grow  tender  with  the  thought  of  the  com- 
forting, heavenly  Father  who  shall  "  wipe  away  all  tears  from 
their  eyes."  Divine,  surpassingly  beautiful !  But  was  it 
not  divine  in  ancient  Egypt  before  Moses  was  born,  the 
identical  thought  and  saying,  and  almost  the  identical  words, 
dreamed  by  some  noble  Egyptian  and  put  into  the  lips  of 
his  God,  who  shall  wipe  away  all  tears  from  their  eyes  ? 


1 72  Religio7i  fo7'  To-day 

Was  it  divine  to  see  Jesus  hang  upon  the  cross,  and  say, 
"  Father,  forgive  them,  they  know  not  what  they  do,"  and 
then  bravely,  with  however  much  of  human  shrinking,  to 
meet  death  for  his  truth  ?  Divine !  I  say,  friends,  one  of 
the  divinest,  grandest  scenes  in  all  the  history  of  the  world. 
But,  mark  you,  if  Jesus  was  consciously  God,  the  God  of 
this  universe,  then  that  scene  is  theatrical,  spectacular,  un- 
real. Could  God,  who  came  on  purpose  to  do  it,  shrink  like 
man  from  a  little  pain  ?  Should  we  think  it  less  wonderful 
that  he  was  great  and  wise  if  he  was  a  man,  believing  in 
his  great  truth,  consecrating  himself  to  his  Father  and  our 
Father  and  for  our  sakes,  if  he  was  ready  to  stand  by  that 
truth  through  scourging,  being  outcast,  maltreated  in  every 
way,  if  he  stood  to  it  before  the  judgment-seat  of  Pilate,  and 
when  he  was  spit  upon  and  the  thorns  placed  on  his  head ; 
and,  if  a  man  fainting  under  his  cross,  he  went  out  to  that 
hill  outside  of  the  city,  faithful  unto  death,  trusting  in  God 
even  when  the  doubt  swept  over  him  for  a  moment  as  to 
whether  he  had  been  deserted  ?  Then  I  say  it  was  one  of 
the  divinest,  most  magnificent  scenes  in  all  the  history  of 
this  world. 

But,  if  he  was  not  a  man,  this  pity,  this  glory,  this  wonder, 
all  change  into  tinsel  and  unreality.  Could  such  things  be 
difficult  and  marvellous  for  a  God  ? 

Thousands  of  men,  for  the  sake  of  their  love  for  and  be- 
lief in  a  cause,  have  met  death  as  bravely  as  he  did ;  have 
met  more  cruel  deaths, —  deaths  prolonged  through  unspeak- 
ably greater  torture ;  met  it  gladly,  met  it  bravely,  without 
flinching  or  fearing. 

Is  it  divine  in  him,  not  divine  in  them  ? 

I  can  only  catch  at  illustrations  here  and  there  in  dealing 
with  so  wide  a  theme. 


Is  God  i7icarnate  in  One  Man  07ily?  173 

Take  the  matter  of  what  we  call  sacred  and  profane  his- 
tory. The  history  of  the  Jews,  they  tell  us,  is  sacred  his- 
tory. The  history  of  America,  which  has  done  unspeakably 
more  for  the  deliverance  of  man  from  bondage  than  did  the 
history  of  the  Jews, —  this  perforce  is  profane!  Why,  is 
there  no  God  in  the  history  of  America  from  the  time  the 
Pilgrims,  under  the  inspiration  of  that  grand  old  John  Rob- 
inson, sailed  for  Massachusetts,  down  through  the  heroes  of 
the  Revolution  to  our  Lincoln  and  the  thousands  of  men 
that  gave  themselves  for  the  land  ? 

Is  this  sacrifice,  this  devotion  to  God, —  is  this  all  nartural 
or  human,  no  God  in  it,  nothing  divine  about  it  ? 

Take  Lincoln,  a  magnanimity  not  surpassed  by  the  ten- 
derness and  forgiveness  of  Jesus  himself;  a  consecration 
not  matched,  I  can  almost  say,  in  the  history  of  the  world ; 
tenderness,  love,  devotion  to  truth,  faithfulness  unto  death ! 
Is  there  no  God  in  Lincoln,  nothing  divine  in  Lincoln  ? 

I  believe,  friends, —  I  do  not  brush  it  one  side, —  I  be- 
lieve God  was  in  Christ,  reconciling  the  world  unto  him- 
self. I  believe  God  was  in  Socrates,  reconciling  the  world ; 
in  the  Buddha.  I  believe  he  was  in  Confucius,  reconcil- 
ing the  world  unto  himself.  I  believe  he  has  been  in  all 
the  great  line  of  witnesses  and  martyrs,  the  true,  faithful 
men  in  every  age  of  the  world,  in  any  religion,  under  every 
sky,  who  have  consecrated  themselves  to  the  truth  and 
given  themselves  to  the  love  and  service  of  their  fellow-men. 
I  believe  that  God  has  been  progressively  incarnating  him- 
self in  his  child,  man,  from  the  very  beginning;  and  that 
to-day,  wherever  you  look  upon  honesty,  wherever  you  look 
upon  faithfulness,  wherever  you  look  upon  pity,  human  help 
and  human  kindness  and  human  care,  there  you  are  stand- 
ing face  to  face  with  God  himself. 


1 74  Religion  for  To-day 

Humanity  is  divine.  God  is  living  in  humanity,  unfold- 
ing himself  in  the  growing  and  expanding  life  of  this  won- 
derful race  of  ours. 

And  I  believe  that  we  are  entitled  to  look  forward ;  and, 
as  we  dream  of  the  coming  time  when  the  beauty  and  the 
glory  of  the  world  shall  appear,  we  can  say,  in  the  words  of 
Tennyson : — 

"  For  I  dipt  into  the  future,  far  as  human  eye  could  see, 
Saw  the  Vision  of  the  world,  and  all  the  wonder  that  would  be ; 

"  Till  the  war-drum  throbbed  no  longer,  and  the  battle-flags  were  furled 
In  the  Parliament  of  man,  the  Federation  of  the  world." 

And,  seeing  God  in  that  future,  we  can  add :  — 

"  Not  in  vain  the  distance  beacons.     Forward,  forward  let  us  range. 
Let  the  great  world  spin  forever  "  up  "■  the  ringing  grooves  of  change !  " 

So  we  will  look  for  the  time  when  the  light  and  the  love  and 
the  goodness  of  God  shall  be  in  all  the  earth,  and  evil  shall 
have  been  outgrown,  and  men  shall  live  here,  looking  trust- 
ingly to  the  sweet  heavens  above  them,  and  drinking  in  the 
divine  air  around  them,  and  looking  upon  death  only  as 
another  birth  by  which  they  enter  into  a  grander  and  higher 
life.  Then  we  shall  be  on  the  road  towards  the  complete 
incarnation  of  God  in  his  one  child,  man. 


THE   DIVINE   FATHERHOOD    AND    OUR 
HUMAN    CHILDHOOD. 


If  you  study  the  lines  of  human  advance  from  the  begin- 
ning until  to-day,  you  will  note  that  one  of  the  most  difficult 
things  —  if  we  are  to  judge  by  the  results — has  been  the 
attainment  of  any  worthy  thought  of  God,  the  attainment 
and  the  keeping  of  any  noble  idea  of  the  Deity. 

This  is  natural  when  you  remember  that  God  is  infinite, 
and  that  we  can  think  him  only  according  to  the  degree  of 
our  development.  We  cannot  comprehend  infinity  :  we  can 
think  God  only  as  we  are  able  to  think  him,  and  he  is  to  us, 
in  his  influence  upon  us,  what  we  think  him. 

The  barbaric  man  had,  of  necessity,  a  barbaric  God ;  for 
men  have  always  created  God,  or  their  thought  of  him,  in 
their  own  likeness.  So,  as  man  has  become  more  civilized, 
tender,  noble,  the  ideal  of  God  that  has  been  worshipped 
has  grown  more  elevated,  been  purified  from  earthly  and 
human  elements  of  passion  and  change. 

But  you  will  note  that  it  is  a  necessity  growing  out  of 
these  facts  which  I  have  stated  that  the  organized  thoughts 
of  God,  so  to  speak, —  those  which  have  become  crystal- 
lized in  creeds  and  institutions  —  are  always  no  better  than 
the  average  thought  of  the  time.  They  are  more  likely  to 
be  the  thought  of  the  past :  they  are  never  the  highest  and 
finest  thoughts  of  the  noblest  representatives  of  the  age. 
You  cannot  get  organized  into  an  institution  anything  above, 


I  ^6  Religion  for  To-day 

beyond,  better,  than  the  average ;  and  generally,  as  I  said, 
all  organizations  and  institutions  represent  phases  of 
thought  that  are  being  outgrown. 

In  other  words,  the  best  things  in  any  department  of 
human  life  are  always  in  the  air, —  the  highest,  finest  intu- 
itions of  the  noblest  and  most  developed  souls ;  so  that  the 
thoughts  of  God  which  have  become  crystallized  in  creeds, 
and  around  which  organizations  have  been  formed,  are 
rarely  the  worthiest  and  noblest  ideals  of  the  Divine. 

Read  the  Old  Testament,  if  you  will,  or  the  New  as  well, 
and  you  will  find  that  there  is  a  progression  in  the  ideas  of 
God.  He  becomes  spiritualized,  ennobled,  purified,  less 
like  the  old-time  men  who  first  began  to  talk  and  think  about 
him.  Difficult,  then,  let  us  remember,  is  it  for  us  to  frame 
and  keep  worthy  thoughts  of  God. 

Among  the  earliest  of  those  that  have  ever  entered  into 
the  dreams  of  the  race  is  figured  forth  by  the  word 
"  Father."  I  would  not  have  you  to  understand  that  Jesus 
originated  the  idea  or  first  taught  the  doctrine  of  the 
Fatherhood  of  God.  It  is  one  of  the  oldest  in  the  history 
of  the  world.  As  I  had  occasion  a  few  Sundays  ago  to 
intimate  to  you,  one  of  the  first  names  given  to  God  in 
India,  before  perhaps  any  part  of  our  Bible  was  written,  was 
Heaven- Father.  Because  God  is  called  Father  in  any 
particular  age  in  the  history  of  the  world,  you  are  not  of 
necessity  to  suppose  that  they  had  the  same  conception 
of  him  that  Jesus  had  when  he  uttered  the  word  "  Father  "  ; 
for  we  put  into  words  what  we  are  capable  of  thinking  and 
making  them  contain. 

The  word  "  God  "  in  different  parts  of  the  world  does  not 
of  necessity  mean  the  same  thing.  It  means  something 
barbaric,  jealous,  revengeful,  cruel  in  one  age  or  among  one 


Divine  Fatherhood  and  Human  Childhood      I'J'J 

people.  It  means  all  that  Jesus  could  dream  of  the  divine 
Fatherhood  in  another  age  and  among  another  people. 

The  Father,  then,  is  the  highest  and  finest  thought,  it 
seems  to  me,  that  we  can  frame  of  God.  But  at  the  present 
time,  perhaps  as  never  before  in  the  history  of  the  world, 
there  are  certain  difficulties  that  stand  in  the  way  of  our 
making  the  Fatherhood  of  God  mean  anything  real  to  us. 

There  are  three  special  difficulties  which  I  wish  to  note 
and  put  one  side,  so  far  as  I  may  be  able  to  in  a  word. 

Modern  science  has  revealed  to  us  such  a  conception  of 
nature  as  the  world  has  never  known  before.  This  is  no 
little  world,  with  God  close  by,  in  the  old  sense  of  the  term. 
We  are  in  the  presence  of  what  seems  to  us  material  infinity. 
We  can  think  neither  beginning  nor  end,  neither  length  nor 
breadth  nor  height  nor  depth  nor  limit  anywhere.  And  this 
nature,  they  tell  us,  is  without  heart,  without  any  feeling. 
It  is  a  great  machine,  rolling  on  like  a  Juggernaut,  crushing 
whoever  and  whatever  gets  under  its  wheels.  It  is  simply 
an  infinite  power,  but  with  no  thought  in  it,  no  care,  no 
tenderness,  no  love. 

This  is  the  conception  of  nature  which  many  hold  as  the 
result  of  the  scientific  studies  which  they  have  pursued. 

Not  only  that.  They  say  that  the  existence  of  evil,  of 
pain  and  of  cruelty, —  that  these  things  demonstrate  that 
there  is  no  Fatherhood  to  be  found,  at  any  rate  in  the 
natural  world. 

Tennyson  sings  sadly  to  us  of  "  Nature,  red  in  tooth  and 
claw  with  ravine."  They  tell  us  that  pain  is  everywhere, 
heart-ache  and  heart-break  and  sorrow  of  every  kind. 

How,  then,  in  the  face  of  these  facts  can  we  believe  in  any 
Fatherhood?  And,  then,  the  Church,  to  which  we  ought 
to  be  able,  if  anywhere,  to  fly  for  relief,  has  only  made  the 


I  yS  Religion  for  To-day 

difficulty  more  for  us ;  for  will  you  note  this  fact :  that, 
though  the  ministers,  the  priests,  the  ecclesiastics,  talk  to  us 
constantly  about  God  as  our  Father,  the  emphasis  is 
never  laid  on  the  Fatherhood.  There  is  not  a  theological 
scheme  in  existence,  the  centre  of  which  is  Fatherhood, 
which  has  been  developed  from  the  idea  of  Fatherhood. 

It  is  always  God  as  king,  despot,  governor,  and  we  his 
subjects.  We  are  under  his  law,  which  must  be  maintained. 
There  is  a  justice  that  has  to  be  appeased.  There  are 
always  those  standing  between  us  and  God.  They  say  we 
must  believe  this  doctrine  which  they  have  invented  before 
we  can  come  to  him ;  we  must  perform  certain  rites  before 
we  can  be  accepted ;  we  must  come  through  some  mediator 
or  another.  They  tell  us  there  is  no  direct  and  immediate 
access  of  the  child-soul  to  the  Father-soul,  either  in  heaven 
or  on  earth. 

Here,  then,  are  these  three  difficulties.  What  shall  we  do 
with  them  ?  The  sermon  might  be  devoted  to  either  one  of 
them  alone.  I  can,  however,  devote  only  a  fragment  of  it  to 
them  altogether,  because  simply  to  establish  the  idea  that 
we  have  a  right  to  call  God  our  Father  is  not  the  purpose 
I  have  in  mind,  but  to  treat  some  phases  of  belief  in  the 
light  thrown  on  them  by  the  ideal  of  Fatherhood 

So  let  me  note  these  objections  in  just  a  few  brief  words, 
not  answering  all  your  questions  concerning  them,  but 
merely  hinting  the  direction  in  which  I  believe  we  could 
find  an  answer  if  I  had  the  time  and  this  was  the  place. 

Take  this  great  fact  of  nature,  a  machine.  Is  it  a 
machine?  Is  there  any  God  in  it?  When  they  talk  about 
nature,  and  say  there  is  no  heart,  no  life,  no  feeling  in  it, 
they  have  left  out  you  and  me.  Humanity  is  a  part  of 
nature  5  and  it  is  the  crown,  the  outcome,  the  highest,  finest 


Divme  Fatherhood  a7td  Human  Childhood      179 

part,  in  which,  if  anywhere,  we  may  expect  nature  to  find  its 
fruitage  and  its  purpose.  And  here  in  humanity  is  person- 
ality, thought,  love,  tenderness,  pity,  fatherhood,  mother- 
hood,—  all  the  sweetest  and  highest  things  we  can  dream. 

These  are  a  part  of  nature ;  and  no  one  has  any  right  to 
speak  of  nature  with  these  left  out. 

And,  then,  they  talk  of  the  uniformity  of  nature,  as  though 
it  militated  against  the  ideal  of  the  divine  Fatherhood.  If 
there  were  not  uniformity,  it  would  be  disastrous  to  the 
thought  of  Fatherhood ;  for  there  could  be  no  study,  there 
could  be  no  learning  anything,  there  could  be  no  human 
experience,  there  could  be  no  building  up  of  character, 
unless  we  knew  the  forces  and  the  methods  with  which 
we  have  to  deal. 

And,  then,  note,  in  a  word,  the  uniformity  of  natural  law 
does  not  necessarily  mean  mechanism  at  all.  It  only  means 
what  the  old  seer  said,  that  "  God  is  without  variableness 
or  shadow  of  turning."  If  God  does  the  wisest  and  best 
thing  in  certain  conditions,  then,  when  those  conditions 
repeat  themselves,  he  must  do  the  same,  or  else  a  poorer 
and  less  wise  thing. 

The  uniformity  of  natural  law,  then,  does  not  mean  a 
force  that  God  cannot  or  does  not  choose  to  break  through : 
it  means  simply  the  wise  and  perfect  and  loving  method  of 
God's  constant  working. 

Then,  as  I  had  occasion  some  Sundays  ago  to  tell  you,  in 
regard  to  pain,  suffering,  evil,  death  :  these  do  not  militate 
against  the  loving  Fatherhood  of  God.  Pain  is  a  token  of 
his  goodness  and  his  care, —  all  the  necessary  pain.  Moral 
evil  is  a  condition  of  moral  growth  and  development. 
Death  is  simply  an  open  gateway  by  which  we  enter  into 
a  larger  and  higher  life ;  and  the   dissatisfactions  of  this 


1 80  Religion  for  To-day 

present  period  of  our  growth  are  only  a  prophecy  and 
promise  of  a  grander,  an  unfolding  capacity,  meaning  only 
that  we  are  not  yet  all  that  we  are  capable  of  being. 

Along  these  lines,  if  I  had  time,  I  think  I  could  demon- 
strate that  none  of  these  things  are  inconsistent  with  the 
pity,  the  tenderness,  and  the  love  of  God. 

Let  us  put  them  one  side,  then,  this  morning,  while  we 
consider  for  a  little  while  two  or  three  phases  of  this  sonship 
as  it  works  itself  out  in  our  practical  attitude  towards  God 
as  our  Father. 

And,  in  the  first  place,  what  is  our  access  to  God  t  Can 
we  come  to  him  directly,  without  the  intervention  of  any 
church,  any  priesthood,  any  ceremony,  any  mediator  of  any 
kind  ?  Is  that  true,  is  God  just  our  Father  and  we  his  chil- 
dren, folded  close  in  his  arms,  whispering  into  his  ear,  and 
a  way  to  him  always  open  to  our  wandering  feet  ?  What 
shall  we  say  of  this  phase  of  the  divine  Fatherhood  as  re- 
lated to  us,  his  children  ? 

There  have  been  in  the  history  of  the  growth  of  religion, 
not  only  among  us,  but  among  other  peoples  as  well,  two 
tendencies,  diverse,  antagonistic.  There  is  always  —  what 
I  will  call  for  clearness  —  the  priestly  type  of  thought,  and 
there  is  always  the  prophetic  type  of  thought;  and  the 
priestly  and  the  prophetic  are  almost  always  in  antagonism 
to  each  other. 

The  priest  is  he  who  loves  the  laws,  the  forms,  the  cere- 
monies, the  organizations.  And  he  emphasizes  these,  and 
often  makes  them,  not  means  of  approach  to  God,  but 
barriers  in  the  way  of  that  approach,  unless  we  make  our 
terms  with  the  priest  who  controls  these  things. 

There  are  always  these  tendencies  in  the  religions  of  the 
world.     If   you  go  back,  for  example,  to  the  Greeks  and 


Divine  Fatherhood  and  Human  Childhood      i8l 

Romans,  you  learn  that  the  cult  for  a  long  period  of  time, 
the  ceremony,  was  everything.  It  made  no  matter  what  the 
character  of  the  worshipper  was, —  no  one  asked  whether 
he  was  a  good  man.  It  made  no  matter  what  he  thought 
or  believed.  He  might  believe  anything  he  pleased ;  but  he 
must  come  to  the  priest  in  the  prescribed  way,  bring  the 
offerings  and  perform  the  ceremonies,  or  else  there  was  no 
way  by  which  he  could  find  access  to  his  God.  It  was 
specified  in  the  most  minute  way.  The  priest  must  wear  a 
particular  gown,  he  must  use  a  particular  kind  of  knife  in 
slaying  the  sacrifice.  The  sacrifice  must  be  just  this  partic- 
ular thing,  and  nothing  else.  The  altar  must  be  built  in  a 
peculiar  way.  The  priest  must  stand  facing  a  certain  point 
of  the  compass ;  and  a  part  of  the  time  he  must  stand  on 
one  foot.  He  must  turn  around  in  a  certain  order ;  he 
must  pronounce  the  formulas  and  perform  the  ceremony 
with  accuracy.  He  must  go  through  all  this  ritual  before  the 
worshipper  could  approach  the  Deity.  And,  if  he  made  a 
mistake  in  it,  however  inadvertent,  the  whole  thing  was 
vitiated,  the  God  was  angry,  and  there  was  no  acceptance. 

This  is  only  an  exaggerated  illustration  of  what  has  been 
true  in  the  whole  history  of  the  world.  Study  the  growth 
of  the  old  Hebrew  religion.  There  you  must  bring  your  sac- 
rifices in  a  particular  way,  at  a  particular  time.  You  must 
go  through  the  whole  ceremony  and  ritual  law,  or  else  there 
was  no  possibility  of  acceptance  on  the  part  of  Jehovah. 
These  from  the  priestly  point  of  view. 

But  ever  and  anon  there  came  the  voice  of  the  prophet, 
speaking  the  authorized  word,  as  he  claimed,  from  the 
Father,  and  denouncing  this  whole  type  of  religious  life  and 
supposed  religious  service,  saying:  If  I  were  hungry,  I 
would  not  tell  Thee.     The  cattle  on  a  thousand  hills  are 


1 82  Religion  for  To-day 

mine.  What  do  I  care  for  your  pouring  out  your  rivers  of 
blood  and  your  barrels  of  oil  ?  Instead  of  all  this  what  I 
want  is  the  child  heart.  I  want  love,  I  want  truth  in  the 
inward  parts,  I  want  sincerity  of  life. 

This,  the  intimate,  immediate  relationship  of  the  child 
with  the  Father,  is  what  was  asserted  by  all  the  old  prophets. 
Then,  when  we  come  to  the  new  era,  was  it  not  this,  and  this 
alone,  which  was  taught  us  by  every  authentic  word  of  our 
elder  brother,  the  Nazarene  ?  Nowhere  in  any  authentic 
teaching  of  his  is  there  any  doctrine  of  mediation, —  none, — 
not  even  with  him  as  mediator. 

Look  at  that  parable  of  the  Prodigal  Son,  which  I  read 
this  morning,  as  throwing  light  on  this  problem.  Does  God 
ask  the  prodigal  to  come  to  him  in  the  name  of  or  through 
the  merits  of  the  son  who  had  stayed  at  home.''  Is  there 
any  priestly  intervention  t  Is  there  any  ceremony  required, 
any  sacrifice,  anything  ? 

Nothing,  absolutely  nothing,  between  the  infinite  tender- 
ness of  the  father  heart  and  the  yearning  of  the  needy  heart 
of  the  child. 

And  yet,  when  the  Church  that  claimed  to  stand  in  the 
name  of  the  Nazarene  had  organized  itself,  it  had  placed  a 
hundred  barriers  between  the  immediate  contact  of  the 
child-soul  and  the  Father-soul, —  ceremony,  ritual,  money, 
prayers,  priestly  intervention,  all  sorts  of  things  it  put  in 
the  way.  And  for  the  larger  part  of  the  last  seventeen  hun- 
dred years  the  great  popular  churches  that  have  claimed  to 
speak  for  God  and  for  his  Son,  Jesus,  have  taught  another 
doctrine  than  that  which  Jesus  himself  taught,  a  different 
doctrine  from  that  which  helps  us  to  believe  in  the  immedi- 
ate love  and  guidance  of  the  Father  who  is  in  heaven  and 
on  earth. 


Divine  FatJierhood  and  Human  Childhood      183 

And  to-day  —  let  me  give  you  one  single  illustration  — 
there  is  going  on  a  prolonged  and  scholarly  controversy  be- 
tween the  archbishops  and  the  bishops  of  the  Anglican 
Church  and  the  pope  of  the  Church  at  Rome  —  over  what? 
Over  the  validity  of  orders,  over  the  question  as  to  whether 
the  Anglican  bishops  and  archbishops  and  priests  have  any 
power  —  for  what  ?  Why,  they  have  arrogated  to  them- 
selves the  power  of  God  himself.  They  are  discussing  the 
question — while  we  are  expected  to  wait  until  their  dialec- 
tics have  settled  the  dispute  —  as  to  which  church,  Rome  or 
England,  has  the  right  to  tell  us  whether  we  can  come  to 
God  or  enter  heaven  or  not. 

Unless  God  has  been  transmitted  by  the  physical  contact 
of  ordained  priests  from  the  time  of  Jesus  himself  without 
a  break  anywhere ;  unless  they  have  power  magically  to 
change  the  bread  and  wine  into  the  body  and  blood 
of  God ;  unless  they  have  power  to  forgive  sins  ;  unless  they 
have  power  by  touching  with  their  moistened  fingers  the 
brow  of  a  child  to  convert  the  babe  —  born  of  the  devil,  as 
they  believe  —  and  give  it  a  new  nature ;  unless  they  have 
power  to  work  miracles, —  there  is  no  salvation  for  any  of  us. 
For  they  are  the  only  ones  who  are  authorized  to  save  men  ; 
and  they  are  now  fighting  over  the  question  as  to  which  one 
it  is. 

And  we  are  to  wait  and  find  out.  We  cannot  come  to 
God  unless  either  an  Anglican  or  a  Roman  priest  takes  our 
toll  at  the  gate,  and  shows  us  the  way.  And  we  do  not 
know  which  of  them  has  the  right  1  They  are  not  agreed 
themselves  as  to  the  matter  ! 

This  is  an  illustration,  I  say,  of  how  the  Church  has 
thrust  itself  between  the  child-soul  and  the  Father-soul  in 
heaven,  and  presumes  to  arrogate  to  itself  the  power,  the 
tenderness,  the  love,  the  forgiveness,  of  our  Father. 


1 84  Religion  for  To-day 

I  tell  you,  friends,  there  is  no  more  dangerous  thing  in 
the  religious  life  of  the  world  to-day  than  that  which,  pre- 
suming to  speak  for  God,  tells  the  world,  and  makes  thou- 
sands believe  it,  that  we  cannot  come  to  the  Father  except 
by  a  creed,  by  a  ceremony,  by  a  ritual,  by  a  sacrament,  by 
the  permission  of  a  priest.  False,  impious  in  every  part  is 
such  a  claim ! 

No  church  has  any  rights  or  powers  except  humbly  to 
point  the  way,  open  all  gates,  throw  down  all  barriers,  and 
proclaim  the  universal  and  eternal  truth  that  God  is  ready 
ever  to  fold  every  one  of  his  children  close  to  his  Father's 
heart, —  readier,  Jesus  tells  us,  than  we  are  to  be  folded ; 
readier  to  give  us  all  the  good  things  —  his  life,  his  spirit, 
his  eternal  love  and  care  —  than  we  are  to  take  them. 

That  is  the  doctrine  of  the  Fatherhood  as  touching  this 
matter  of  our  access  to  God. 

One  other  phase  of  belief  needs  to  be  looked  at  in  the 
light  of  this  great  truth.  That  is  the  doctrine  of  forgive- 
ness. I  have  been  speaking  of  merely  the  matter  of  open 
access  to  God,  as  to  whether  we  can  come  to  him  freely  and 
personally  on  our  own  account  and  simply  because  we  are 
his  needy  children. 

Now  what  shall  we  believe  of  his  forgiveness  ?  It  is  pop- 
ularly said  of  us  liberals  that  we  preach  a  loose  doctrine  of 
forgiveness ;  that,  just  because  we  believe  in  the  eternal,  lov- 
ing Fatherhood  of  God,  we  think  it  does  not  make  any  differ- 
ence what  a  man  does,  he  is  doomed  anyway  to  be  saved, — 
it  is  only  a  little  time,  more  or  less,  that  must  elapse ;  that 
is  all. 

This,  I  say,  is  what  is  said  of  us.  But,  friends,  we  are 
the  only  ones,  I  believe,  who  teach  the  hard  doctrine,  the 
severe  doctrine.     If  I  may  sin  as  much  as  I  please  until  I 


Divine  Fatherhood  and  Hitman   Childhood      185 

am  sixty  or  seventy  years  old,  and  then  by  the  touch  of  the 
priestly  hands  and  the  administration  of  consecrated  oil  I 
may  be  forgiven,  the  past  wiped  out,  and  the  gate  of  para- 
dise flung  wide  open  for  me  ;  if  I  may  live  as  I  please,  and 
then  on  my  death-bed  repent  by  feeling  badly,  and  by  tears 
and  prayer  wipe  out  the  past  and  start  afresh  on  an  equality 
with  the  best  in  heaven  itself ;  if  I  may  secure  all  this  by 
committing  my  soul  to  the  care  of  a  priest  as  a  guide,  claim- 
ing a  fee  for  his  services, —  these  are  the  easy  ways  of  being 
saved. 

But  no ;  while  with  one  breath  I  proclaim  to  you  the 
infinite,  tender,  eternal  Fatherhood  of  God,  I  proclaim  to 
you,  in  the  next,  that  there  is  no  such  thing  as  forgiveness 
in  this  universe,  in  the  sense  of  suddenly  or  miraculously 
wiping  out  the  past. 

One  of  the  most  dangerous  doctrines,  one  of  the  most 
immoral  doctrines,  that  can  possibly  be  proclaimed,  is  that 
which  deludes  people  with  the  idea  that  they  can  live  any 
life  they  please, —  sensual,  cruel,  dishonest,  unkind,  deceit- 
ful,—  and  then,  by  any  process,  suddenly  wipe  the  soul  clean 
again.     It  cannot  be  done ! 

I  break  one  of  God's  laws ;  and  the  result  remains.  God 
cannot  help  it  unless  he  can  contradict  himself  ;  for  these 
forces  that  determine  the  results  of  action  are  God  in  opera- 
tion, God  working,  the  changeless,  the  eternal  God.  God 
does  not  need  to  forgive  us  in  the  sense  of  feeling  like 
a  loving  father  towards  us.  He  always  forgives  us  in  that 
sense ;  but,  if  I  break  a  physical  law,  the  penalty  follows, — 
not  arbitrary  punishment,  but  the  natural  and  necessary 
result.  If  I  break  a  moral  law,  the  penalty  follows,  the 
result  just  the  same. 

I  stamp  my  foot  on  this  platform,  and  it  is  felt  in  the  sun. 


1 86  Religion  for  To-day 

I  think,  I  feel,  I  speak,  I  act,  and  I  have  set  into  activity 
causes  that  make  the  life  of  the  world  other  than  they 
would  have  been;  and  I  can  never  trace  those  forces  or 
obliterate  those  results. 

Every  law  that  you  break,  friends,  entails  its  natural  and 
necessary  result  of  evil.  You  may,  indeed,  work  out  your 
redemption,  your  deliverance.  You  may  make  your  mis- 
takes and  faults  stepping-stones  on  which  to  climb  to 
higher  things ;  but  that  which  you  have  done  is  done,  the 
record  is  forever  and  forever,  and  the  results,  until  they  are 
worked  out  into  good,  continue  and  remain  irretrievably  as 
evil. 

If  you  injure  another,  that  injury  remains  until  you  make 
restitution.  If  you  have  been  the  means  of  another  person's 
going  astray,  and  that  person  causes  a  third  to  go  astray, 
and  so  a  long  line  of  evil  is  started,  you  may  never  be  able 
to  reach  to  the  end  of  it  or  to  discover  how  far  it  has  gone. 
Forgiving  you,  taking  you  in  arms  of  love  and  mercy,  does 
not  stop  that  process. 

Do  not  be  careless,  then,  in  dealing  with  these  problems 
of  right  and  wrong  under  the  idea  that  you  can  be  forgiven 
in  that  sense,  merely  because  God  is  a  loving  Father.  God 
is  a  loving  Father ;  and,  because  he  is  a  loving  Father,  he 
will  compel  you  to  work  out  your  own  salvation  through  the 
suiTering  of  the  natural  and  necessary  result  of  every  word 
you  speak,  every  thought  you  think,  every  act  you  perform. 

That  is  the  only  way  by  which  you  can  build  yourself  up 
into  noble  and  fine  and  high  character  again. 

Now,  what  time  there  is  left,  I  must  dwell,  altogether  too 
inadequately,  on  another  phase  of  this  question  of  Father- 
hood, of  approach  to  God,  that  which  might  well  take  an  en- 
tire discourse, —  the  problem  of  prayer.      Is  there  any  use 


Divine  Fatherhood  and  Human  Childhood      187 

in  this  great  universe,  of  which  we  are  a  part  to-day,  in  our 
praying  ?  Can  we  pray  ?  Is  it  reasonable  to  pray  ?  Can 
we  produce  any  effects  by  our  prayer  ? 

I  must  only  suggest  a  few  things ;  and  perhaps  you  will 
be  able  to  think  them  out  along  the  line  suggested  for 
yourselves. 

There  are  several  phases  of  prayer  which  are  absolutely 
gone  and  can  never  be  recovered  again.  Our  forefathers 
believed  that  they  could  produce  rain  for  their  thirsty  crops 
as  the  result  of  prayer.  They  believed  that  they  could  cure 
disease  by  prayer.  They  believed  that  they  could  work  all 
sorts  of  miracles,  changes  in  the  order  of  the  world,  by 
prayer. 

If  I  believed  I  could  interfere  with  the  order  of  this  uni- 
verse by  praying,  I  should  never  dare  to  open  my  lips  in 
prayer  again.  It  is  because  I  believe  in  the  perfect  order 
of  the  universe  of  God  that  I  do  pray,  and  that  I  believe  in 
prayer, —  not  only  as  much  as,  but  more  than,  I  ever  did  in 
my  life.     Only,  mark  you,  certain  discriminating  definitions  ! 

To  illustrate  one  phase  of  this  matter,  let  me  refer  to  a 
conversation  I  had  some  years  ago  with  a  lady  in  the  West. 
She  was  troubled  over  this  question  of  prayer.  I  was  be- 
ginning to  be  troubled  over  certain  phases  of  it  myself. 
But  that  which  troubled  me  was  my  belief  in  the  wisdom 
and  goodness  of  God,  not  the  opposite.  I  said  to  her  as 
we  were  discussing  the  matter,  "  What  would  you  think  of 
me  if  I  should  come  to  you,  and  plead  with  you,  and  beg  you 
to  be  kind  to  your  own  children, —  to  give  them  something  to 
eat,  to  give  them  clothes  to  wear,  to  treat  them  kindly  and 
lovingly  ? "  I  said,  "  What  should  you  think  of  me  if  I 
should  beg  you  and  plead  with  you  to  be  a  good  mother  ? " 
She  said,  '*  I  should  feel  insulted."  I  said,  "  Of  course,  you 
would."    And  then  I  asked:  "  Don't  you  think  God  is  almost 


1 88  Religion  for  To-day 

as  good  as  you  are  ?  Do  you  think  we  need  to  tell  him 
over  and  over  again  what  he  knows  a  good  deal  better  than 
we  do  ?  Do  you  think  we  need  to  argue  and  plead  with  him, 
as  though,  if  we  could  only  influence  him  to  do  something, 
we  might  have  our  will  ?  Do  you  think  it  is  wise  for  us  to 
beg  God  to  be  good,  to  talk  as  though,  if  we  could  only 
rouse  him  to  activity,  something  might  be  done  ?" 

I  have  been  in  prayer-meetings  in  the  old  days  a  hundred 
times  when  the  praying  seemed  to  me  impious  and  profane, 
only  they  did  not  mean  it  so.  They  were  talking  as  though, 
if  God  were  only  as  much  interested  in  the  welfare  of  souls 
as  they  were,  they  could  get  him  started  to  do  something 
about  it. 

Does  that  kind  of  prayer  seem  to  you  right  and  wise 
to-day  1 

Nay,  friends,  I  do  not  believe  there  is  any  use  in  teasing 
God,  in  begging  God.  I  do  not  believe  I  can  change  his 
purposes  or  plans.  I  do  not  believe  I  can  make  him  wiser 
than  he  is  already,  kinder  than  he  is  already. 

Is  there  any  use  of  praying,  then?  Sometimes  it  is  said 
that,  if  you  leave  all  that  element  of  prayer  out,  that  it 
becomes  only  a  sort  of  spiritual  gymnastics,  producing  a 
certain  effect  on  us,  but  nothing  that  might  not  be  accom- 
plished in  another  way. 

Let  me  illustrate,  if  I  may,  in  a  word,  one  phase  of  my 
belief  on  this  great  subject.  I  believe,  in  the  first  place, 
that  the  more  we  love  God  and  the  more  we  trust  him,  the 
less  we  shall  ask  for  things,  the  more  we  shall  simply  com- 
mune with  him.  Communion  of  the  child-soul  with  the 
Father-soul  is  the  essence  and  most  important  thing,  as  I 
believe,  in  prayer. 

But  do  we  accomplish  anything  in  the  spiritual  realm  by 
prayer.?     I   believe  we  do.     And  let  me  hint  by  an  illus- 


Divine  Fatherhood  and  Human  Childhood     189 

tration  what  I  mean  and  how  it  may  be  possible  :  I  have  a 
plant,  say,  that  seems  to  need  something  to  make  it  grow. 
It  is  pining  as  if  it  lacked  air  or  sunshine.  I  am  keeping  it 
in  my  room.  Now  I  wish  to  produce  certain  definite  and 
very  vital  results  in  that  plant.  I  take  the  plant  out  into 
the  sunshine.  I  take  it  where  it  will  have  the  dews  and  the 
rain,  and  where  the  free  airs  of  heaven  will  blow  around  it. 
I  do  not  change  the  dew  or  the  rain,  or  the  air  or  the  sun- 
shine ;  but  I  make  my  plant  live,  which  would  have  died 
otherwise.  I  change  the  vital  relationship  between  my 
plant  and  the  sun  and  these  eternal  forces  that  are  con- 
cerned in  its  life  and  unfolding. 

And  so,  by  my  prayer,  I  do  not  change  God  any, —  I  do 
not  wish  to  change  him  any ;  but  I  may  vitally  change  the 
relation  between  my  soul  and  his  changeless  and  eternal 
love.  And  so  I  find  life,  I  find  health,  where  there  was 
weakness  and  decay.  I  find  strength,  I  find  comfort,  be- 
cause I  have  changed  the  relation  between  my  soul  and  the 
soul  of  my  Father. 

It  seems  to  me  that  right  in  here  is  the  essence,  the  one 
most  important  thing  touching  the  meaning  and  import 
of  prayer.  As  we  get  more  spiritual,  as  we  trust  our 
Father  more,  we  shall  grow  less  and  less  to  ask  for  things ; 
and  at  the  same  time,  perhaps,  we  shall  grow  less  and  less 
critical  in  our  use  of  words. 

I  sometimes  wonder  whether  in  public  prayer  I  am  not 
giving  utterance  to  phrases  which  I  should  not  approve  of 
if  I  looked  at  them  critically.  I  try  not  to  do  it;  but  yet, 
the  older  I  get,  the  less  care  I  have  on  this  subject. 

My  little  boy  comes  and  climbs  up  over  my  knees,  and 
pours  out  his  child  nature  in  my  ears,  tells  me  all  sorts  of 
extravagant  and  foolish  things  he  would  like  to  have  and 
do.     Do  I  criticise  him  as  to  the  use  of  his  English.?     Do 


1 90  Religion  for  To-day 

I  care  very  much  what  words  he  uses  ?  I  am  not  going 
to  give  him,  even  if  he  cries  for  it,  what  I  believe  would  be 
to  his  harm.  I  am  going  to  love  him  against  his  will  and 
against  his  wish  and  wisdom,  if  need  be ;  but  I  am  going 
to  let  him  tell  me  his  stories,  and  let  him  pour  out  his  soul 
into  mine,  and  I  will  clasp  him  close  to  my  heart,  whether 
he  is  wise  or  whether  he  is  good,  or  whether  he  is  the 
opposite. 

This  is  the  essence,  it  seems  to  me,  of  Fatherhood.  Let 
us,  then,  not  make  much  of  public  prayer.  Did  you  ever 
notice  that,  if  you  followed  strictly  the  teaching  of  Jesus,  you 
would  never  pray  in  public  at  all  ?  If  people  were  as  care- 
ful to  obey  his  words  in  these  directions  as  they  tell  us  they 
ought  to  in  others,  public  prayer  would  cease,  once  for  all. 
Jesus  says,  "  Go  into  your  closet,  and  shut  the  door,  when 
you  pray,  and  pray  to  the  Father  which  is  in  secret." 

Learn  to  feel  and  act  as  though  he  were  close  beside  you, 
watching  over  you,  guiding  you.  This  is  the  essence  of 
prayer. 

Let  us,  then,  friends,  as  we  study  the  theological  teach- 
ings of  the  world,  the  conceptions  of  God  that  are  given  us 
to  worship  and  follow, —  let  us  bring  them  to  the  test  of 
this  idea  of  Fatherhood.  If  they  will  not  stand  that  test, 
you  may  be  sure  they  are  wrong.  And  remember  that  God 
is  not  only  Father,  but  he  is  as  good  and  tender  and  sweet 
in  his  Fatherhood  at  least  as  we  are. 

Remember  those  words  of  Jesus  where  he  appeals  to  the 
fatherhood  of  the  people  who  are  listening  to  him.  Would 
you  treat  your  children  so  t  If  a  child  asks  bread,  will  you 
give  him  a  stone?  If  he  asks  fish,  will  you  give  him  a 
serpent?  If  ye,  then,  being  evil,  know  how  to  give  good 
things  to  your  children,  how  much  more  shall  the  Father 
give  good  things  to  them  that  ask  him ! 


IMMORTALITY  FROM  THE  POINT  OF  VIEW 
OF  THE  MODERN  WORLD. 


It  seems  to  me  a  matter  of  immense  importance  to  prove, 
if  we  can,  to  demonstrate,  that  death  is  not  the  end  of 
personal  conscious  existence.  We  may  hope,  we  may- 
dream,  we  may  cling  to  this  faith  lovingly,  tenderly ;  but  it  is 
something  else  for  us  to  be  able  to  say  we  know. 

Why  is  it  important  ?  Does  it  change  anything  >  It 
seems  to  me  that  it  changes  certain  things  in  the  most 
important  of  all  conceivable  ways. 

If  I  am  going  to  live  fifty  years,  I  would  certainly  lay  out 
my  life  on  a  different  scale  than  might  be  perfectly  appro- 
priate if  I  were  to  live  only  six  months  or  one  year.  (  If,  when 
I  get  through  with  this  little  scene  of  affairs  on  this  visible 
earth  and  under  this  visible  sky,  I  get  through  for  good  and 
all,  then  there  are  a  thousand  things  that  it  would  not  seem 
to  me  at  any  rate  worth  while  to  attempt  to  do  or  to  become. 
(  If  a  man  with  his  friends  is  going  out  on  an  excursion  to 
camp  in  the  woods  for  a  few  weeks,  he  does  not  consider 
it  of  any  great  importance  that  he  build  himself  a  sub-^. 
stantial  house  that  would  stand  for  five  hundred  years)  ^  If  a 
young  man  is  going  through  Columbia  University,  and  if  he 
knows  that  he  is  to  die  and  that  is  to  be  the  end  of  it  on 
the  day  that  he  graduates,  will  he  feel  stimulated  to  study, 
to  make  himself  master  of  all  those  things  that  otherwise  he 
might  strive  to  acquire  ?     Would  you  blame  him  any  if  he 


1 92  Religion  for  To-day 

/  tried  simply  to  have  a  pleasant  time  during  those  four  years  ? 
f  He  need  not  injure  any  one,  he  need  not  lead  what  we  would 
call  an  immoral  life;-  but,  certainly,  you  would  not  think  him 
culpable  for  not  bending  all  his  energies  to  the  acquirement 
of  knowledge  that  was  to  be  of  no  practical  use  to  him 
whatever  ! 

But,  if  the  graduation  day  is  not  the  end,  but  only  the 
beginning  of  a  long  career,  then  would  he  not  feel  that  it 
was  worth  while  to  brace  himself  physically,  mentally, 
morally,  to  acquire  self-mastery,  to  learn  all  those  things 
which  will  make  him  mighty  in  shaping  his  future  life  among 
his  fellow-men  ? 

So,  if  I  have  before  me  an  immortal  career,  that  is  one 
thing. 

I  wish  you  to  note,  friends,  that,  whether  we  have  or 
not,  the  essential  principles  of  morality,  of  right  and  wrong, 
are  not  changed.  If  we  should  wake  up  on  a  floating  raft 
at  sea,  knowing  that  our  lives  were  to  extend  no  more  than 
twenty-four  hours,  even  then  it  would  not  be  right  for  us  to 
injure  each  other,  and  make  our  position  more  uncomfortable 
than  it  need  to  be.  But,  if  men  are  not  to  live  in  the  future, 
I  do  not  believe  that  your  grandest  moral  ideals  are  going 
to  have  leverage  power  enough  to  lift  them  out  of  their 
selfishness,  and  make  them  lead  grand,  magnificent,  conse- 
crated lives. 

I  know  that  George  Eliot  sings  her  wondrous  song  of  the 
choir  invisible,  and  tells  us  how  grand  a  thing  it  is  to  live 
for  the  coming  generations  here  on  earth,  though  she 
herself  held  and  cherished  no  belief  in  an  immortal  career 
beyond.  But  tell  me  why,  friends !  If  a  man  says  to  me, 
looking  me  straight  in  the  face,  Why  should  I  sacrifice 
myself  for  the  sake  of  another  man  whose  happiness  is  no 


Immortality  193 

more   important   to   the    universe  than  my  own,  what  can 
I  say  to  him  ? 

It  seems  to  me  that  if  I  believed  that  when  I  died  that 
was  the  end,  I  should  try  not  to  injure  anybody.  I  should 
indeed  work  hard,  perhaps,  to  make  the  lives  of  my  fellow- 
men  a  little  easier,  to  lessen  the  amount  of  pain  and  suffer- 
ing in  the  world.  But  I  should  certainly  not  think  it  worth 
while  strenuously  to  endeavor  to  build  up  in  me  a  spiritual 
nature  that  can  find  scant  room  for  exercise  here.  I  do 
not  see  how  any  one  could  find  fault  with  me  so  long  as  I 
injured  no  one,  but  tried  to  help  on  the  common  happiness, 
if  I  made  the  aim  of  my  life  the  seeking  of  happiness, — 
happiness  in  innocence,  harmlessness  to  others. 

But,  if  I  believe  that  the  day  of  my  death  is  the  day  of 
my  graduation,  that  I  am  just  beginning  to  live  then,  that 
this  life  is  only  a  college  course  by  way  of  preparation  for 
the  next, —  if  I  believe  that  with  my  whole  soul,  then  nothing 
else  becomes  of  any  great  importance. 

\^  You  remember  that  significant  word  of  Browning's  in  the 
introduction  to  his  poem  of  "  Sordello,"  where  he  says,  "  The 
culture  of  a  soul;  little  else  is  of  any  value."  If  I  am  a 
soul,  and  if  my  soul  begins  its  career  at  death,  then  indeed 
it  is  true, —  and  I  can  look  the  world  in  the  face  and  preach 
it  with  all  my  power, —  it  is  indeed  true  that  little  else  is  of 
value. 

What  difference  does  it  make  whether  you  are  very  rich 
in  this  world  or  not.?  Vv^hat  difference  does  it  make 
whether  you  live  on  one  of  the  finest  avenues  or  on  a  more 
common  street  ?  What  difference  does  it  make  what  kind 
of  clothing  you  wear  ?  What  difference  does  it  make  what 
office  you  hold  or  what  social  position  you  enjoy  ?  These 
things  are  all  well  in  their  places ;  but,  if  you  really  believe 


1 94  Religiofi  for  To-day 

the  other  thing  with  your  whole  soul,  then  the  main  purpose 
of  your  life  —  and  it  is  the  only  rational  thing  —  will  be 
devoted  to  what  you  can  become  and  to  what  you  can^ 
athieve  for  others.  Then  indeed  those  words  of  Jesus 
gain  magnificent  significance :  He  that  saveth  his  life 
shall  lose  it ;  and  he  that  loseth  his  life  for  the  truth,  for 
God,  is  the  only  one  who  saves  it.  / 

I  You  see,  then,  that  kncjwledge  on  this  subject  has  a  tre- 
f  mendous  bearing  on  the  kind  of  life  we  should  lead  here. 
!i  I  believe  indeed  —  I  suggest  this  in  passing  -^that  there  is 
nothing  like  demonstrated  knowledge  here  so  well  fitted  to 
help  us  solve  the  great  social  and  industrial  problems  of  the 
world.  The  masses  of  men  in  Europe  and  America  are 
saying.  You  have  been  trying  through  all  the  ages  to  put 
us  off  by  telling  us  that  we  ought  to  be  content  in  that 
position  in  which  Providence  has  placed  us,  and  look  for 
our  reward  in  another  world.  And  they  are  beginning  to 
say:  We  doubt  about  that  other  world:  it  looks  like  a 
device  on  the  part  of  the  comfortable,  with  the  assistance 
of  the  priests,  to  keep  us  quiet ;  and  we  do  not  propose  to 
be  fooled  by  it  any  longer.  We  wish  our  share  of  the  only 
good  about  which  we  really  know  anything. 
And  can  you  blame  them  ?  I  cannot. 
But,  if  I  can  look  these  men  in  the  faces,  and  say,  I  know 
and  you  know  that  you  are  souls,  that  you  are  to  live  forever, 
then  I  can  say  to  them  also :  Do  you  not  see  that  it  is  only 
reasonable  that  you  should  go  through  this  world  in  such  a 
way  as  to  start  with  all  the  advantage  possible  over  there  ? 
Do  you  not  see  that  these  men  who  have  the  money  and  the 
social  position  have  what  is  relatively  of  no  importance 
whatever  ?  You  have  God  and  the  immortal  life, —  all  that 
is  capable  of  making  wealthy  a  soul,  a  child  of  the  Infinite. 


Immortality  195 

So  I  say,  look  at  it  however  I  will,  it  seems  to  me  of  im-l 
mense  importance  that  we  should  be  able,  if  we  may,  to 
demonstrate  continued  existence. 

(^  I  ask  you  now  to  look  over  the  face  of  the  world  with  me 
for  a  little,  and  see  where  we  are  as  touching  this  matter  of 
belief  concerning  a  future  life. 

I  use  the  word  "future  "  in  connection  with  this  life.  Let 
us  remember,  however,  that  it  is  not  future  except  as  related 
to  us  who  are  speaking.  If  our  friends  who  have  passed 
over  are  alive  at  all,  they  are  alive  now  in  the  same  natural 
sense  as  we  are,  and  under  the  same  universe  and  beneath 
the  guidance  of  the  same  Father  that  we  are. 

What  is  the  condition,  then,  of  the  modern  world  as  to  this  \ 
matter  of  belief  in  continued  existence  ?  There  are,  I  know, 
vast  numbers  of  people(  in  all  the  churche^  who  have  taken  | 
this  belief  for  granted.  It  has  come  to  them  from  the  pa3t  % 
as  a  tradition.  I  They  have  said.  There  must  have  been  ade-  ? 
quate  reason  for  the  belief  when  it  first  took  possession  'of  I 
the  hearts  of  men  ;  and  they  have  not  been  troubled  by  any  i 
manner  of  doubt.")  i 

\  Blessed,  in  one  way,  at  least,  are  these  souls  that  are  un- 
troubled. I  would  not  speak  one  word  that  should  touch 
the  beautiful  fabric  of  their  belief.  I  would  not  undermine 
their  trust :  I  would  help  them  to  maintain  it  as  long  as  they 
ma;^  But  I  am  compelled  to  recognize  the  fact  that  only  a ' 
small  part  of  the  people  to-day  are  thus  contented  and  satis-  \ 
fied.  There  are  those  in  our  old  churches  —  and  this  is 
another  class  from  the  one  I  have  just  been  speaking  of  — 
who  have  accepted  this  belief  as  a  tradition,  who  have  not 
questioned  it,  but  who,  when  the  great  strain  of  sorrow 
comes,  find  that  the  cables  which  are  attached  to  the  an- 
chors of  their  hope  down  in  the  deep  sea  give  way ;  and  they 
find  themselves  adrift  and  in  doubt.  "5 


196  Religion  for  To-day 

I  had,  for  example,  not  a  great  while  ago  a  letter  from  a 
lady  only  two  or  three  years  married,  looking  with  hope  and 
joy  towards  the  future,  whose  husband  suddenly  was  snatched 
out  of  her  arms  by  death.  And  she  wrote  me  —  I  had  never 
seen  her  —  and  said  :  "  I  have  for  years  been  a  member  of 
one  of  the  old  churches.  I  supposed  I  believed ;  but  now, 
when  this  great  trial  comes,  everything  is  gone."  As  I  read 
the  letter,  I  could  hear  the  tears  drip  from  the  first  word  to 
the  last.  And  she  wrote :  Tell  me,  do  you  believe,  is  there 
any  reason  for  trust  in  God  ?  May  I  hope  for  a  future  life  t 
I  have  written  you,  and  not  gone  to  my  own  minister,  be- 
cause from  the  position  which  you  occupy  I  know  you  would 
tell  me  just  what  you  think,  not  what  you  think  you  ought  to 
think.  If  I  go  to  my  own  minister,  I  am  afraid  he  will  tell 
me  what  he  thinks  the  Church  will  expect  him  to  say. 

So,  when  these  great  tests  come,  so  frequently  the  faith 
gives  way. 

I  attended  the  funeral  of  the  wife  of  one  of  my  old  friends 
in  Boston  this  last  week.  The  wife's  father  was  there  from 
a  distant  city.  The  relation  between  the  daughter  and 
father  had  been  peculiarly  close  and  strong.  He  whispered 
in  my  ear  just  as  soon  as  the  service  was  over  that  he 
wished  he  could  believe.  He  said,  "  I  have  been  trained  in 
the  old  church ;  but  I  find  my  faith  growing  very  dim  as  I 
get  older." 

And  it  seems  to  me  that  most  men,  as  they  get  on  into 
middle  life,  find  this  trust  getting  unreal  to  them  ;  and  they 
wish  they  knew. 

Only  a  little  while  ago  a  novel  was  published  and  widely 
read.  One  of  its  characters  was  an  Episcopal  rector  and 
another  an  old  gentleman,  his  long-time  friend,  with  whom 
and  others  he  had  been  accustomed  to  play  a  quiet  game 


Immortality  197 

of  whist  of  an  evening.  The  old  gentleman  is  dying,  and 
he  sends  for  his  rector ;  and,  when  he  comes,  he  looks  into 
his  face,  and  says  :  Now  I  want  to  ask  you  a  question ;  and 
I  want  you  to  answer  me  as  man  to  man.  Do  not  give  me 
your  official  opinion.  As  a  man  and  a  friend,  do  you  know 
anything  about  it  1     And,  so  adjured,  he  says,  No,  I  do  not. 

I  instance  these  cases  simply  to  show  that  so  many  times, 
when  this  traditionally  and  generally  accepted  faith  is  put  to 
the  test,  it  gives  way. 

You  find,  on  the  other  hand,  some  who  have  given  it  up. 
Harriet  Martineau  used  to  say,  as  she  grew  older,  that  she 
did  not  care  for  any  future  life  :  I  am  tired.  All  I  want  is 
rest.  I  do  not  desire  any  future  life.  She  did  not  care  to 
have  it  proved  to  her.  I  have  had  the  same  thing  said  to 
me  in  the  course  of  my  life  a  great  many  times.  But  I  have 
replied :  — 

You  are  mistaken,  if  you  say  this,  in  interpreting  your 
own  state  of  mind.  You  are  not  tired  of  living.  You  are 
tired  of  carrying  burdens.  You  are  tired  of  certain  condi- 
tions that  are  hard,  and  from  which  you  have  not  been  able 
to  escape.  You  are  heart-hungry,  you  are  weary :  you  are 
not  tired  of  living.  And  so  I  say  concerning  this  state  of 
mind,  as  Tennyson  says  in  "  The  Two  Voices  "  :  — 

"  Whatever  crazy  sorrow  saith, 
No  life  that  breathes  with  human  breath 
Has  ever  truly  longed  for  death. 

"  'Tis  life  whereof  our  nerves  are  scant, 
O  life,  not  death,  for  which  we  pant ;   v 
More  life,  and  fuller,  that  I  want."        ) 

Another  class  of  thinkers  at  the  present  time  are  those 
that  call  themselves  agnostics.     If  you  go  back  a  little  ways, 


198  Religion  for  To-day 

two  or  three  hundred  years,  you  come  to  a  time  when  the 
people  thought  that  they  knew  more  about  the  other  world 
than  they  did  about  this  one  even.  Read  Dante.  He  maps 
out  the  Inferno  and  the  Paradiso  as  no  geographer  could 
map  this  planet;  and  they  all  believed  that  it  was  real, — 
they  lived  in  the  other  world.  The  strongest  men  of  the 
age  believed  so  thoroughly  that  everything  else  gave  way  in 
view  of  preparation  for  that  which  was  to  come  after  death. 

But  there  came  the  Renaissance,  which  was  a  sort  of  re- 
awakening to  the  life  of  this  present  world.  Out  of  that 
sprung  the  scientific  spirit ;  and  out  of  that  has  grown  the 
agnostic. 

What  is  the  scientific  spirit  ?  Is  there  any  evil  about  it  ? 
No.  It  is  nothing  more  nor  less  than  the  reasonable  de- 
mand on  the  part  of  reasonable  men  and  women  that  they 
should  have  proof  for  that  which  is  presented  to  them  for 
acceptance. 

Mr.  Huxley  went  so  far  as  to  say  that  he  believed  it  was 
immoral  for  people  to  believe  without  any  proof.     A  doubt    \ 
is  as  sacred  as  faith,  and  the  only  object  of  either  of  them  is 
to  lead  to  the  discovery  of  truth. 

The  scientific  man,  then,  is  no  enemy  to  the  future  life : 
he  simply  wishes  what  I  wish, —  to  know. 

They  used  to  sing,  you  know,  about  making  their  "title 
clear  to  mansions  in  the  skies  "  ;  and  it  was  lovely,  so  long 
as  people  could  believe  that  the  titles  were  clear.  But, 
when  the  scientific  investigators  asked  leave  to  look  into 
these  titles  and  see  if  they  were  valid,  the  most  of  them 
were  found  not  to  bear  a  very  close  or  careful  investigation. 

So  people  woke  up,  and  were  obliged  to  confess  that  they 
did  not  know  so  much  about  the  other  world  as  they  had 
supposed.     So  here  is  this  agnostic  position. 


o 


Immortality  1 99 

I  have  never  met  an  agnostic  who  was  glad  to  be  one, — 
not  if  he  was  a  sensible  man  at  the  same  time.  He  simply 
says :  I  must  confine  myself  to  that  which  is  true.  I  must 
know:  I  cannot  rest  in  simply  what  is  called  "faith,"  which 
is  shutting  the  eyes  and  believing  in  the  dark.  I  wish  evi- 
dence for  these  great  things  that  we  are  told  are  founded 
in  the  eternal  nature  of  the  universe. 

Now  let  us  look  for  a  moment  at  still  another  class.  We 
come  to  those  that  are  ready  to  argue  with  us  to-day  that 
we  have  adequate  reason  for  believing  in  continued  exist- 
ence simply  on  the  basis  of  the  story  that  Jesus,  after  being 
crucified,  was  raised  again  from  the  grave,  in  the  same 
body  which  he  wore  when  he  was  on  the  cross.  This  is 
offered  to  the  world  to-day.  I  have  seen  two  or  three  times, 
several  times  within  the  last  week  or  two,  the  argument 
made  that  here  is  the  Gibraltar  of  Christianity,  here  is  the 
one  reason  for  our  believing  in  continued  existence. 

I  wish,  as  carefully  as  I  may,  to  look  at  this  for  a  little, 
and  see  how  much  it  means.  You  are  not  to  suppose  that 
I  am  done  with  it  when  I  have  treated  this  point  with  which 
I  am  immediately  concerned.  I  shall  wish  to  refer  to  it  a 
little  later  on. 

I  say  then,  friends,  frankly  to  you  that,  even  if  I  believed 
that  the  physical  body  of  Jesus  was  raised  from  the  tomb,  I 
should  fail  utterly  to  see  how  it  carried  any  hope  or  ade- 
quate comfort  for  me. 

Take  it  on  the  old  theory  that  Jesus  was  God.  If  God 
continues  to  live  through  what  is  ordinarily  called  the  fact 
of  death,  how  does  it  prove  that  I  am  to  continue  to  live, 
when  I  am  not  God  ?  If  a  physical  body  is  raised  from  the 
grave,  how  does  that  prove  that  I  am  to  continue  to  live 
when  I  have  no  sort  of  expectation  that  my  physical  body 


200  Religion  for  To-day 

is  ever  to  be  raised  ?  I  cannot  see  the  vital  link  of  connec- 
tion that  is  supposed  to  make  this  belief  valid. 

And,  then,  I  must  say  to  you  with  perfect  frankness  that  I 
do  not  regard  the  evidence  that  is  offered  to  us  in  behalf  of 
the  contention  that  the  physical  body  of  Jesus  was  raised 
from  the  dead  as  valid  in  any  way  whatsoever.  We  have 
not  even  one  first-hand  witness  of  such  an  occurrence.  Paul 
tells  us  that  he  saw  Jesus ;  but  he  does  not  claim  to  have 
seen  him  in  the  body, —  it  was  a  vision  after  his  supposed 
ascension.     We  have  no  jfirst-hand  testimony. 

And,  then,  I  wish  you  to  note  another  thing.  A  story 
like  that  never  could  have  grown  up  in  the  modern  world. 
When  heaven  was  supposed  to  be  just  above  this  arch  of 
blue,  and  when  an  atmosphere  that  any  man  could  breathe 
was  supposed  to  fill  the  space  between  where  the  throne  of 
God  is  and  this  earth,  then  it  is  conceivable  that  a  body 
might  pass  up  through  this  atmosphere,  and  enter  into  that 
abode.  But,  when  we  know  now  that  anything  constituted 
as  we  are  cannot  possibly  live  for  five  minutes  after  it  ha? 
passed  beyond  a  certain  distance  in  the  sky;  and,  when  we 
know  that  there  is  no  heaven  with  the  throne  of  God,  on 
the  right  hand  of  which  any  one  could  sit  down,  just  above 
this  dome  of  blue ;  when  we  know  it  would  take  light  thou- 
sands of  years  to  reach  the  centre  of  the  universe,  if  there 
be  any  centre, —  which  no  man  knows, —  do  you  not  see 
that  a  conception  like  that  cannot  reasonably  live  for  five 
minutes  in  this  universe  where  we  find  our  home  .-* 

We  must  dismiss  that,  then,  it  seems  to  me,  as  the  basis 
for  our  belief  in  continued  existence  after  the  experience  of 
death.) 

And  yet,  in  spite  of  agnostics,  in  spite  of  all  the  clear- 
headed and  earnest-hearted  criticism  of  the  modern  world, 


Immortality  201 

in  spite  of  the  doubt  that  is  everywhere  in  the  air,  the 
human  heart  still  pleads  for  its  dead,  still  longs  for  some 
hope  that  those  that  have  been  loved  shall  not  be  forever 
lostA  And,  in  the  face  of  these  critics,  we  find  men  like 
Oliver  Wendell  Holmes  uttering  his  passionate  remon- 
strance :  — 

"  Is  this  the  whole  sad  story  of  creation, 

Lived  by  its  breathing  myriads  o'er  and  o'er, — 
One  glimpse  of  day,  then  black  annihilation, — 
A  sunlit  passage  to  a  sunless  shore  ? 

"  Give  back  our  faith,  ye  mystery-solving  lynxes  I 
Robe  us  once  more  in  heaven-aspiring  creeds  I 
Happier  was  dreaming  Egypt  with  her  Sphinxes, 
The  stony  convent  with  its  cross  and  beads !  " 

I  sympathize  with  and  my  whole  heart  leaps  in  response 
to  this  plea  of  our  beloved  poet  Holmes,  all  but  the  last 
part  of  it,  which  I  utterly  repudiate.  Would  it  be  better  to 
have  faith  in  a  future  life  with  the  Sphinxes  and  the  civiliza- 
tion of  ancient  Egypt  ?  Would  it  be  better  to  have  faith  in 
a  future  life  with  the  convents  of  the  Middle  Ages  and  the 
cold  and  hard  creeds  ?     Nay,  friends  ! 

I  do  not  know  whether  you  will  say  Amen  to  this  utter- 
ance of  mine  or  not,  but  I  must  say  it  with  all  the  fervor  of 
my  soul:  If  I  could  have  an  immortal  heaven,  with  all  I 
love,  ever  have  loved,  ever  shall  love,  grouped  around  me 
there,  and  have  it  at  the  price  of  the  eternal  loss  and  wail 
of  the  poorest,  meanest  soul  that  ever  lived,  I  would  turn 
my  back  on  it,  and  go  gladly  to  sleep  in  eternal  night. 

I  have  no  respect  for  that  man  who  is  willing  to  take 
heaven  for  himself  at  the  price  of  hell  for  anything  that 
ever  lived.     I  do  not  say,  then,  better  the  dreaming  Egypt 


202  Religion  for  To-day 

of  the  Sphinxes,  better  the  stony  convent  with  its  cross  and 
beads.  No  belief  at  all  is  better  than  a  belief  that  God  is 
Jieartless  and  cruel,  and  that  the  smoke  of  the  torment  of 
the  great  majority  is  to  ascend  and  cloud  the  fair  heavens 
"for  ever  and  ever. 

But  that  is  not  the  alternative,  as  I  believe. 

£,et  us  see,  then,  where  we  are.  j  Now  I  do  not  propose 
at  first  to  offer  you  what  I  regard  as  proof.  I  only  propose 
to  outline  for  you  two  or  three  considerations  which  seem 
to  me  to  establish  a  tremendous,  a  magnificent  probability 
in  that  direction. 

And,  first,  it  seems  to  me  one  of  the  most  striking  facts  in 
the  history  of  this  world  that  practically  all  men  everywhere 
have  believed.  No  matter  what  their  reason  for  believing, 
the  simple  fact  that  they  have  cherished  a  belief, —  is  it  not 
wonderful  ? 

f  Here  is  a  body  from  which  the  life  has  departed.  It 
looks,  friends,  does  it  not,  as  though  it  were  all  over? 
Whence,  then,  springs  that  audacious,  that  magnificent 
trust  that  there  was  something  in  this  body,  or  connected 
with  it,  that  is  able  to  overleap  that  black  and  apparently 
bottomless  abyss,  and  start  on  its  endless  career  of  light  on 
the  other  side? ') 

If  you  should  see  a  dog  bent  pensively  over  the  body  of 
one  of  his  fellow-dogs,  and  you  could  know  he  was  asking 
the  question:  If  a  dog  die,  shall  he  live  again?  —  you  would 
think  you  were  in  the  presence  of  something  unspeakably 
strange,  wonderful. 

The  simple  fact,  then,  that  men  have  dared  to  dream  of  a 
future  life  seems  to  me  marvellous  in  its  significance ;  and  I 
am  inclined  to  beUeve  that  trust  everywhere  connected  with 
love  and  hope  in  human  souls  comes  from  a  whisper  of  our 


Immortality  203 

Father  in  heaven.  I  believe  that  it  means  something  very 
grand  and  full  of  cheer  and  peace. 

Another  thought.  When  modern  science  first  began  to 
gain  its  wondrous  development  in  the  world,  there  was  for 
a  long  time  the  feeling  and  fear  that  some  theory  of  mate- 
rialism would  ultimately  gain  dominance,  and  control  the 
beliefs  of  men. 

But,  note,  it  is  not  the  Church,  it  is  not  religion,  that 

has  killed  materialism  :  it  is  fearless  study  that  has  killed  it. 

{    Materialism,  as  philosophy  and  science  to-day,  is  antiquated 

and  dead.     It  has  no  standing  among  the  finest  and  most 

scholarly  thinkers  of  the  world. 

There  is  no  possibility  out  of  any  combination  you  please 
of  dead  matter  of  producing  a  thought,  feeling,  love,  or 
hope.  And  the  simple  fact,  then,  that  we  place  man,  soul, 
first,  and  matter  afterwards,  seems  to  me  to  have  a  tre- 
mendous significance  in  this  direction. 

Spenser,  the  old  poet,  the  author  of  the  "  Faery  Queen," 
is  the  author  also  of  two  lines  suggestive  in  this  direction. 

He  says, — 

"  For  of  the  soul  the  body  form  doth  take  ; 
For  soul  is  form,  and  doth  the  body  make." 

I  believe  life  is  first.  Life  creates  and  shapes  what  we 
call  matter, —  without  knowing  anything  about  what  matter 
really  is. ) 

One  other  consideration :  This  universe,  just  as  far  as  we 
are  able  to  trace  it,  we  find  to  be  a  reasonable  universe.  So 
we  are  compelled  to  believe  that  rationality  runs  through 
I  and  characterizes  all  that  which  to  us  at  present  is  still  un- 
known. It  is  a  reasonable  universe.  Now  think!  I,  for 
one,  cannot  believe  that  it  is  reasonable  to  suppose  that  the 
universe  takes  such  pains  through  millions  of  years  to  ac- 


204  Religion  for  To-day 

complish  magnificent  results  for  nothing  at  all !  From  the 
fire-mist,  millions  of  years,  until  this  little  earth  of  ours 
swings,  a  globe,  around  the  sun  ;  thousands  on  thousands 
of  years  while  it  cools,  and  until  it  becomes  the  abode  of 
sense  and  life;  thousands  on  thousands  of  years  while 
the  lower  forms  of  life  dominate  it,  while  it  is  climbing 
up  through  fish  and  bird  and  mammal  to  man ;  then  thou- 
sands on  thousands  of  years  while  man  is  going  through  the 
process  of  preparation  ;  thousands  on  thousands  of  years 
while  humanity  climbs  up  at  last  to  the  height  of  Homer, 
Pericles,  Virgil,  Goethe,  Shakspere,  to  the  more  magnificent 
heights  of  Confucius,  Gautama,  Mohammed,^'^«ST» ;  climb- 
ing up  to  these  magnificent  peaks  of  intellectual  and  spirit- 
ual light  and  power. 

Now,  friends,  I  find  it  almost  impossible  to  believe  that 
.A^<>  through  millions  of  years  of  preparation  the  universe  should 
have  reached  on  and  on  up  to  the  production  of  these  marvel- 
lous results  for  the  sake  of — what?  Nothing!  To  snuff 
out  all  that  it  has  taken  such  pains  to  produce,  to  end  in  a 
blank  after  such  elaborate  and  careful  preparation ! 

It  seems  to  me  absurd.  And  so,  if  I  had  no  other  reason 
than  this,  I  should  still  trust  in  continued  existence  after 
death,  trust  that  this  magnificent  work  which  the  universe 
has  been  at  such  pains  to  perfect  would  continue,  and  mean 
something  in  the  ages  that  are  to  come. 

But  I  frankly  say  to  you  that  these  things  are  not  what 
i  scientists  would  call  demonstration,  they  are  not  absolute 
'       proof  :  they  are  simply  magnificent  probabilities. 

Then  is  there  anything  else  ?     I  wish  now  to  call  your 

attention  to  a  class  of  facts  that  have  only  recently  come  to 

be  recognized  seriously  by  the  earnest  and  competent  stu- 

f  dents  of  the  world.     A  few  years  ago  a  man  appeared  in 


Immortality  205 

France  who  claimed  to  have  discovered  a  power  that  after 
him  came  to  be  called  "  Mesmerism."  Now  the  same  thing 
is  called  hypnotism,  the  name  only  being  changed. 
(  A  biassed  scientific  commission  was  appointed  to  investi- 
gate the  matter  while  Mesmer  still  lived;  and  they  pro- 
nounced it  all  delusion  and  fraud.  J  To-day  there  is  not  a 
competent  thinker  on  the  face  of  the  earth  who  does  not 
know  that  a  hundred  times  more  than  Mesmer  claimed  is 
true. 

What  does  this  mean?  It  means  simply  that  we  are 
beginning  to  study  these  wonderful  minds  of  ours.  The 
mind  of  man  is  the  last  continent  on  earth  to  be  explored. 
Until  these  very  modern  years  it  has  been  more  unknown 
than  the  wilds  of  darkest  Africa  itself.  We  are,  however, 
beginning  to  study  the  mind  of  man.  We  have  found  not 
only  that  these  marvellous  things  are  true;  but  we  have 
found  that  clairvoyance,  clairaudience,  and  telepathy  are 
real.  I  mean  by  this, —  be  sure  you  understand  me, —  not 
that  all  that  is  said  by  those  who  claim  to  be  clairvoyant 
and  clairaudient  is  so.  No.  I  simply  mean  that  these 
powers  exist. 

What  does  this  mean.?  It  means  that  these  wondrous 
minds  of  ours,  these  souls,  ourselves,  can,  under  certain 
conditions,  see  without  any  eyes  and  hear  without  any  ears, 
and  communicate  half-way  round  the  globe,  without  any 
of  the  ordinary  means  of  communication.  What  does  that 
mean  t  Does  it  prove  a  future  life  ?  Not  at  all.  But  I 
suggest  to  you  as  to  whether  it  does  not  take  a  significant 
step  in  that  direction. 
f  It  is  said  that  Ralph  Waldo  Emerson  and  Theodore 
Parker  were  one  day  taking  a  walk  in  Concord  when  a 
believer  in  the    Second   Advent  rushed  wildly  up  to  them, 


2o6  Religion  for  To-day 

and  told  them  that  the  world  was  very  near  its  end.  I  omit 
Theodore  Parker's  reply,  which  was  very  witty,  but  irrele- 
vant here,  and  call  your  attention  only  to  that  of  Emerson. 
Emerson  said :  "  Well,  my  friend,  suppose  the  world  is  com- 
ing to  an  end  !     I  think  I  can  get  along  without  it ! " 

Now  the  point  I  wish  you  to  note  as  the  suggestion  of  this 
reply  of  Emerson's  is  this :  If  a  mind  can  see  without  eyes, 
if  it  can  hear  without  ears,  if  it  can  communicate  without 
a  tongue,  and  that  without  much  regard  to  distance  in 
space, —  in  other  words,  if  I  can  get  along  for  awhile  with- 
out so  many  of  these  faculties  and  powers  of  the  body, — 
may  it  not  be  reasonable  for  me  to  believe  that  I  can  get 
along  without  it  entirely  ? 

There  is  another  whole  class  of  facts  which  I  must 
suggest  to  you.  I  shall  not  go  into  them  to-day  in  the  way 
of  giving  specific  and  detailed  experiences.  I  now  simply 
make  certain  assertions,  which  I  am  ready  to  prove  when- 
ever called  upon  to  do  so.) 

There  is  in  existence,  as  most  of  you  are  aware,  in  Eng- 
land and  this  country,  a  Society  for  Psychical  Research.  It 
is  a  society  that  investigates  that  whole  class  of  alleged 
facts  and  happenings  which  have  been  believed  in  from  the 
beginning  of  the  world,  but  which,  by  educated  people  in  our 
modern  life,  have  been  brushed  one  side  and  treated  with 
contempt. 

I  have  been  studying  these  matters  now  for  over  twenty 
years,  with  no  personal  bias,  with  no  personal  wish, —  why 
should  any  one  have  a  wish  of  that  sort  t  —  to  believe  what  is 
not  true,  but  simply  with  a  desire  to  find  out  what  sort  of 
being  I  am,  and  whether  there  is  any  scientific  reason  for 
trusting  that  I  may  overleap  the  fact  of  death.  • 

Now  I  wish  you  to  note,  friends,  one  fact.     The  things 


Immortality  207 

that  are  asserted  to  be  taking  place  in  the  modern  world  are 
precisely  similar  to  the  happenings  of  which  the  Bible,  Old 
Testament  and  New,  is  full, —  precisely  similar  facts. 
There  is  not  a  religion  on  the  face  of  the  earth  that  has  not 
had  its  birth  in  the  midst  of  alleged  facts  of  a  similar  kind. 
There  is  not  a  nation  on  the  face  of  the  earth  that  has  not 
been  telling  these  stories  from  the  beginning. 

(  What  are  they  ?  They  are  visions,  they  are  voices,  they 
are  messages  coming  from  across  the  border.  They  are 
based  on  the  idea  that  the  other  world  is  as  real  as  this, 
and  that  at  times  the  partition  is  so  thin  that  we  can  gain 
glimpses  through  and  hear  words  that  are  uttered,  that 
sometimes  even  the  denizens  of  that  world  on  special  mis- 
sions do  appear  in  this. ) 

If  you  are  not  ready  to  investigate  facts  like  these  in  the 
modern  world,  why  should  you  believe  precisely  similar 
tales  two  thousand,  three  thousand,  four  thousand  years 
old,  on  the  testimony  of  nobody  knows  whom,  when  you 
cannot  possibly  investigate  them  to  find  out  whether  they 
are  creditable  witnesses  or  not  or  whether  they  really  saw 
what  they  asserted  took  place  ? 

I  leave  you  face  to  face  with  that  dilemma. 
There  is  not  a  belief  in  a  future  life  on  the  face  of  the 
earth  to-day  that  does  not  reach  back  to  some  asserted  hap- 
pening of  this  particular  kind. 

(  Now  a  word  in  regard  to  the  reappearance  of  Jesus  after 
death.  I  told  you  that  I  did  not  believe  that  the  body,  the 
physical  body,  of  /esus,  was  raised  from  the  dead.  I  do  be- 
lieve, however,  that  his  disciples  saw  him  and  talked  with 
him.  I  do  not  consider  that  the  evidence  that  has  come 
down  to  us,  two  thousand  years  old,  is  sufficient  to  establish 
that  belief.    But  I  believe  that  similar  things  have  happened 


2o8  Religion  for  To-day 

in  the  modern  world.  Therefore,  I  can  believe  that  they 
may  have  happened  then. 

I  believe  that  Jesus  was  seen.  1  believe  that  this  mag- 
nificent fact  is  that  which  inspired  the  early  Church  and 
gave  us  our  Easter  morn.  I  believe  that  the  story  which 
grew  up  years  and  years  afterwards  (that  his  physical  body 
disappeared  from  the  tomb  of  Joseph)  is  not  supported  by 
adequate  proof ;  and,  if  it  were,  it  would  only  be  a  difficulty 
to  my  faith. 

Jesus  did  not  want  his  physical  body  any  more  than  I 
shall  want  mine ;  and  what  the  early  disciples  needed  was 
not  the  belief  that  his  physical  body  was  raised  from  the 
dead, —  for  that  must  die  again  if  it  were, —  but  that  Jesus 
lived  right  through  death. 

I  do  not  believe  in  death  any  more.  I  believe  in  life.  I 
believe  I  am  to  go  through  that  process  that  they  call  death 
no  more  disturbed  or  troubled  or  changed  than  I  am  by  the 
fact  that  I  went  through  the  sleep  of  last  night  and  waked  up 
this  morning. 

This  is  my  belief :  I  believe  that  Jesus  lived,  that  all  live 
unto  God.     "  He  is  not  a  God  of  the  dead,  but  of  the  living." 

Now  at  the  end.  I  should  be  ready,  friends,  at  the  proper 
time  and  place  to  adduce  what  I  call  good  evidence  in  a 
court  of  justice  for  all  that  I  have  said.  I  cannot  go  into  it 
this  morning  ;  but  here  at  the  close  I  wish  to  suggest  one 
thought  for  our  comfort,  and  give  you  two  or  three  quota- 
tions, because  they  are  such  beautiful  expressions  of  what  is 
my  real  belief. 

You  know  there  are  certain  high  mountains  which  catch 
the  first  rays  of  the  morning's  sun  ;  and  it  is  hours  and  hours 
after  that  before  the  plains  and  the  valleys  are  light.  So 
there  are  mountainous  men,  seers,  taller  men  intellectually 


Immortality  209 

and  spiritually  than  you  and  I,  who  can  see  away  over  our 
heads.  The  divine  sunrise  smites  them  first ;  they  look  away 
down  the  future ;  they  see  things  which  are  not  yet  visible 
to  us.  So  we  call  them  seers.  Their  vision  is  not  scientific 
proof ;  but  the  experience  of  the  world  has  justified  our  trust 
in  them  so  many  times  that  I  find  it  easy  to  believe  them. 

Now  I  wish  to  read  you  the  expression  of  the  trust  of  two 
or  three  of  these  seers. 

First,  a  few  lines  from  Edward  Rowland  Sill,  a  young 
American  poet  who  died  of  consumption  at  about  the  age 
of  thirty,  but  who  had  the  promise  in  him  of  wonderful 
things,  could  he  have  lived :  — 

What  if,  some  morning  when  the  stars  were  paling 
And  the  dawn  whitened  and  the  East  was  clear, 
Strange  peace  and  rest  fell  on  me  from  the  presence 
Of  a  benignant  Spirit  standing  near : 

And  I  should  tell  him,  as  he  stood  beside  me, 
"  This  is  our  earth,  most  friendly  earth  and  fair  ; 
Daily  its  sea  and  shore  through  sun  and  shadow 
Faithful  it  turns,  robed  in  its  azure  air : 

"  There  is  blest  living  here,  loving  and  serving 
And  quest  of  truth  and  serene  friendship  dear ; 
But  stay  not,  Spirit!     Earth  has  one  destroyer  — 
His  name  is  Death  :  flee,  lest  he  find  thee  here !  " 

And  what  if  then,  while  the  still  morning  brightened 
And  freshened  in  the  elm  the  summer's  breath. 
Should  gravely  smile  on  me  the  gentle  angel,  ^ 

And  take  my  hand  and  say,  '*  My  name  is  Death  "  ?     ] 

Then  just  those  sweet  words  of  Tennyson,  the  last  that 
appear  in  his  volume  of  completed  poems,  "  Crossing 
the  Bar":  — 


2IO  Religion  for  To-day 

Sunset  and  evening  star, 

And  one  clear  call  for  me ! 
And  may  there  be  no  moaning  of  the  bar 

When  I  put  out  to  sea. 

But  such  a  tide  as  moving  seems  asleep, 

Too  full  for  sound  and  foam, 
"When  that  which  drew  from  out  the  boundless  deep 

Turns  again  home. 

Twilight  and  evening  bell, 

And  after  that  the  dark ! 
And  may  there  be  no  sadness  of  farewell 

When  I  embark ; 

For  though  from  out  our  bourne  of  Time  and  Place 

The  flood  may  bear  me  far, 
I  hope  to  see  my  Pilot  face  to  face, 

When  I  have  crost  the  bar. 

And  now  one  more  word,  and  this  time  the  last  thing  in 
the  volume  of  Walt  Whitman's  poems  :  — 

Joy!  Shipmate  —  joy! 
{ Pleased  to  my  soul  at  death  I  cry) 
Our  life  is  closed  —  our  life  begins ; 
The  long,  long  anchorage  we  leave, 
The  ship  is  clear  at  last  —  she  leaps ! 
She  swiftly  courses  from  the  shore ; 
Joy!  Shipmate  —  joy! 


HELL  AND   HEAVEN. 


Paul  says :  "  Whatsoever  a  man  soweth,  that  shall  he 
also  reap." 

This  figure,  borrowed  from  the  experiences  of  the  farmer, 
chimes  in  perfectly  with  the  law  of  the  universe  which  has 
only  been  clearly  discovered  and  scientifically  demonstrated 
in  our  own  day.  We  are  under  the  reign  of  law.  What  we 
are,  what  we  have  been,  what  we  shall  be,  is  determined  in 
accordance  with  it.  And  this  reign  of  law  is  not  confined 
to  this  life  or  to  this  planet.  It  is  universal,  one  God,  one 
law,  throughout  the  universe. 

I  leave  this,  then,  simply  as  the  underlying  principle 
which  is  to  determine  the  course  of  our  discussion  con- 
cerning the  essential  things  which  make  up  hell,  which 
constitute  heaven  in  this  world,  in  all  worlds. 

In  order  that  the  matter  may  be  made  very  clear  to  us,  I 
shall  be  obliged  this  morning,  in  che  first  place,  to  touch  on 
the  doctrines  of  hell  and  heaven  as  they  are  set  forth  in  the 
Old  and  New  Testaments  and  in  the  traditions  and  creeds 
of  the  popular  churches.  Then  I  shall  consider  the  ques- 
tion as  to  who  are  to  inhabit  these  hells  or  heavens,  as  to 
what  reason  we  have  —  if  we  have  any  —  for  holding  to  the 
traditional  views,  and  then  outline  for  you  what  seem  to 
me  to  be  the  eternal  and  necessary  truths  connected  with 
character,  and  which  therefore  must  determine  the  matter 
of  happiness  or  suffering  in  any  part  of  the  universe. 


212  Religion  for  To-day 

If  any  one  supposes  that  I  might  omit  the  earlier  part  of 
my  theme,  I  simply  say  in  reply  that  we  cannot  know  any- 
thing alone,  anything  as  set  apart  and  separated  from  every- 
thing else.  In  order  to  understand  the  present  conditions 
of  theological  thought  in  regard  to  these  matters  and  what 
I  believe  to  be  the  thought  of  the  future,  we  need  to  under- 
stand, at  least  in  outline,  the  thought  of  the  past  out  of 
which  present  conditions  have  sprung. 

And  we  must  remember  here  the  principle  which  I  have 
enunciated  possibly  more  than  once  during  the  course  of 
this  past  winter ;  and  that  is  that  theologies,  religious  the- 
ories, are  necessarily  and  intimately  associated  with  geo- 
graphical and  scientific  ideas, —  always  a  cosmology  inti- 
mately linked  with  every  theological  scheme. 

In  order,  then,  that  you  may  know  where  hell  and  heaven 
have  been  conceived  to  be  in  the  past,  you  need  to  have  in 
your  mind  again  a  clear  conception  of  the  world  or  universe 
as  it  was  held  in  the  past. 

I  have  already  told  you  —  I  simply  remind  you  of  it  — 
that  the  old  universe  was  very  small.  Until  within  a  few 
hundred  years,  in  the  thought  of  mankind,  the  entire  uni- 
verse was  not  so  large  as  we  know  the  orbit  of  the  moon  to 
be  to-day.  Here  was  the  little,  flat,  stationary  earth.  A  few 
miles  only  above  the  blue  dome  was  heaven,  as  material 
and  real  in  that  sense  as  the  earth  itself. 

Visit  the  Plains  of  Shinar,  for  a  hint  of  Hebrew  thought, 
and  see  the  builders  starting  their  tower  with  which  they 
verily  believed  they  would  be  able  to  climb  up  into  heaven. 
This  indicates  how  small  the  world  was  to  their  thought, 
and  how  short  a  distance  away  heaven  was  supposed 
to  be. 

It  was  not  confined  to  the  Hebrews.     Go  back  among  the 


Hell  and  Heaven  2 1 3 

Greeks  and  Romans,  and  you  will  find  the  Titans  piling 
mountains  on  top  of  each  other,  so  that  they  may  be  able 
to  scale  heaven,  and  attack  the  gods  in  their  very  seats. 
This  lets  you  into  the  child-world  thought  about  the  uni- 
verse. 

Now  in  that  universe  where  was  heaven  and  where  was 
hell  ?  and  what  kind  of  places  were  they  ? 

Heaven,  as  I  said,  was  just  above  the  blue  dome ;  and, 
when  they  came  to  believe  in  hell  at  all,  it  was  a  cavern 
just  a  little  ways  underground.  And  you  need  only  to 
study  mediaeval  literature,  the  traditions  and  stories  of  the 
saints,  to  study  Dante,  to  go  back  and  read  Virgil  and 
Homer,  in  order  to  come  face  to  face  with  the  real  belief  of 
the  common  people  that  there  was  a  cave,  if  they  could 
only  find  it,  through  which  they  could  descend  into  the 
underworld.  And  they  believed  that  the  inhabitants  of  this 
underworld  frequently  emerged  from  this  cave,  and  in- 
terfered in  all  sorts  of  ways  with  what  was  going  on  here 
among  men. 

This,  then,  is  the  general  picture  that  you  must  have  in 
your  mind. 

Now  I  wish  to  bring  you  face  to  face  with  something 
that  seems  to  me  strange,  and  which  I  have  never  been  able 
to  explain.  Moses,  it  is  said,  being  the  reputed  son  of 
Pharaoh's  daughter,  was  brought  up  and  trained  in  all  the 
learning  of  the  Egyptians  ;  and  we  know  that  the  Egyptians 
believed  so  vividly  in  the  other  life  that  it  was  as  real  to 
them  as  this  was.  They  had  their  hells  and  their  heavens, 
their  places  of  punishment  and  their  places  of  reward  ;  and 
they  pictured  in  their  "  Book  of  the  Dead "  the  souls  just 
freed  from  the  body  as  going  before  the  judges,  their  gods, 
and  their  thoughts,  their  whole  course  of   life,  being  esti- 


214  Religion  for  To-day 

mated  and  weighed  before  they  were  assigned  their  places 
in  the  other  world. 

And  yet,  when  we  come  to  Moses  as  dealing  with  the 
children  of  Israel,  we  find  no  belief  in  any  future  life,  in 
heaven  or  hell  either,  for  the  ordinary  inhabitants  of  the 
earth. 

Did  it  ever  occur  to  you  that  throughout  the  entire  Old 
Testament  history  there  were  only  two  persons  ever  repre- 
sented as  having  gone  to  heaven  ?  They  were  Enoch  and 
Elijah,  both  of  whom  were  translated  and  taken  up  into 
the  presence  of  the  angels,  where  God  held  his  court. 
Throughout  the  entire  Old  Testament  history  nobody  else 
was  ever  thought  of  as  having  gone  to  heaven,  in  the  mod- 
ern sense  of  that  word. 

And  what,  perhaps,  will  surprise  you  even  more,  there  is 
nobody  throughout  the  Old  Testament  history  who  is  ever 
represented  as  having  gone  to  hell  at  all,  in  the  modern 
sense  of  that  word. 

It  is  partly  the  fault  of  the  translators,  and  it  is  partly 
the  fact  that  words  change  their  meaning ;  but  I  wish  you 
to  note  what  is  true, —  that  there  is  not  one  single  instance 
in  the  Old  Testament,  from  its  first  word  to  its  last,  where 
the  term  "hell"  means  hell  in  the  ordinary  orthodox  signifi- 
cance of  that  term. 

What  the  Jews  believed  was  something  like  this :  At  first, 
as  I  said,  in  the  early  part  of  their  history,  they  had  little 
belief  in  angels  or  spirits  at  all.  And  let  me  postpone 
what  I  was  going  to  say  for  a  moment,  while  I  enlarge 
upon  this  idea  to  make  it  a  little  clearer. 

You  are  familiar  with  the  fact  that  in  the  New  Testament 
the  Sadducees  are  represented  as  the  great  typical  doubters. 
They  were  the  ones  who  had  no  belief  in  angels  or  spirits. 


Hell  and  Heave, 


What  it  means  was  that  the  Sadducees  were  really  the  old- 
fashioned  conservatives  among  the  Jews  :  they  held  to  what 
was  the  old-time  Mosaic  belief,  the  belief  of  the  Pentateuch. 
They  rejected  the  later,  new-fangled  traditions  that  had 
sprung  up,  as  they  held,  without  any  Scriptural  authority 
or  warrant.  This  means  that  towards  the  latter  part  of  the 
history  of  the  Jews  they  began  to  have  a  growing  belief 
in  a  real  and  active  life  after  death.  There  is  no  trace  of 
any  commonly-accepted  ideas  about  angels  or  spirits  until 
the  time  of  the  captivity,  when  they  came  into  contact  with 
the  Persians  and  Babylonians,  who  had  these  beliefs  fully 
developed. 

Sheol,  the  old  word  sometimes  translated  "  hell,"  sometimes 
"  the  grave," —  Sheol  was  simply  an  underground  cavern  in 
general,  a  place  where  people  went  when  they  died;  but 
it  was  not  a  place  of  conscious,  active  existence.  The 
souls,  if  they  really  had  souls,  were  supposed  to  be  inhabit- 
ing this  underground  cavern  in  a  sort  of  sleep, —  semi-con- 
scious or  unconscious  condition.  There  was  no  real  active 
life. 

Read,  as  bearing  on  this  subject,  certain  passages  in 
the  Old  Testament,  which  I  have  not  time  to  go  into 
an  explanation  of  in  full.  The  Old  Testament  says  there 
is  no  work,  there  is  no  joy,  there  is  no  —  anything  —  in 
Sheol.  The  inhabitants  of  Sheol  do  not  praise  God  any 
more.  This  is  the  Old  Testament  idea  in  regard  to  the 
underworld. 

By  and  by,  as  I  said,  at  the  time  of  Jesus,  continued 
existence  and  places  for  the  good  and  the  bad  were  quite 
developed  in  the  popular  mind ;  but  they  had  not  got  them- 
selves written  into  those  books  which  became  a  part  of  the 
Canonical  Scriptures.     So  the  statement  I  made  as  to  the 


2 1 6  Religioii  for  To-day 

teaching  of  the  Old  Testament  on  this  subject  is  literally 
true. 

What  was  the  belief  at  the  time^of  Christ?  Nobody 
then  went  to  heaven,  however  good  they  might  be.  They 
believed  that  the  souls  of  the  dead  continued  to  exist  and 
were  conscious  ;  but  they  all  went  down  into  Hades.  Hades 
is  simply  the  Greek  term  for  Sheol,  meaning  substantially 
the  same  thing, —  a  cavern  under  the  surface  of  the  earth. 

When  Jesus,  for  example,  on  the  cross  is  represented  as 
saying  to  the  penitent  thief,  "  This  day  shalt  thou  be  with 
me  in  Paradise,"  he  did  not  mean  thou  shalt  be  with  me 
in  heaven ;  for  it  was  not  supposed  that  Jesus  himself  was 
going  to  heaven.  He  was  going  down  to  Hades,  this  under- 
world. 

But  by  this  time  the  underworld  had  been  divided  into 
two  parts.  On  the  one  side  was  the  place  where  the  happy 
were  supposed  to  abide, —  the  good;  the  other,  the  bad. 
One  was  called  Paradise :  the  other  was  called  Gehenna. 
But  both  of  them  were  in  this  underground  cavern. 

When  Jesus  was  raised  from  the  dead, —  I  am  now  setting 
forth  the  popular  belief, —  it  was  supposed  that  he  broke 
through  this  prison-house  where  all  souls  had  been  hidden 
away  from  the  beginning  of  the  world.  And  in  the  New 
Testament  you  remember  the  passage  where  it  says,  "He 
led  captivity  captive."  This  is  simply  a  Hebraic  expression, 
meaning  only  that  he  led  up  with  him,  when  he  went  into 
heaven,  a  multitude  of  the  good  who  had  been  held  captive 
in  the  underworld  until  that  time.  So  that  here  is  the  first 
time  in  the  history  of  the  Hebrew  or  Christian  thought  when 
any  of  the  souls  of  the  good  went  to  heaven.  When  Jesus 
ascended  on  high,  he  led  with  him  these  spirits  that  had  been 
in  prison. 


Hell  and  Heaven  217 

Now,  when  we  come  to  consider  early  Christian  thought 
on  this  subject,  we  must  keep  this  constantly  in  mind. 
Although  Jesus  went  to  heaven  and  took  these  specially 
selected  souls, —  supposed  to  be  Abraham  and  other  saints 
and  noble  ones  of  the  ancient  time, —  when  he  took  them 
with  him,  it  did  not  mean  at  all  that  from  that  time  to  this 
all  the  people  the  minute  they  died  were  to  follow  him. 
Still,  in  early  Christian  thought,  the  dead  went  down  to  this 
underworld;  and  here,  in  accordance  with  the  popular 
beliefs,  they  were  to  stay  until  the  day  of  the  resurrection 
and  the  last  judgment. 

It  has  been  a  popular  teaching  that,  since  the  body  has 
shared  on  the  part  of  the  sinner  with  his  sins,  and  on  the 
part  of  the  saint  with  his  self-denials  and  sufferings  for  truth, 
at  death  that  body  should  share  in  the  final  suffering  or  the 
final  joy. 

You  must  remember,  of  course,  that  people,  when  this 
doctrine  grew  up,  had  no  conception  of  the  truth  that  each 
man  during  the  course  of  his  life  wears  half  a  dozen  or 
ten  or  fifteen  different  bodies,  and  that  it  would  be  a  little 
inconvenient  to  have  all  of  them  raised.  They  forgot  all 
this,  or  they  did  not  know  it,  rather.  So  they  taught  that 
there  could  be  no  complete  misery,  no  complete  happiness, 
until  the  soul  was  joined  to  this  body  again,  which  has 
shared  with  it  the  good  or  the  evil  of  this  present  life  here 
on  earth. 

So  the  soul  was  to  lie  quiescent  in  "The  Intermediate 
State."  I  think  most  of  you  remember  that  phrase, — 
whether  you  have  ever  stopped  to  find  out  what  it  meant  or 
not.  At  the  resurrection  these  souls  were  to  be  joined  again 
to  the  body,  and  the  evil  were  to  be  sent  to  their  final  abode, 
and  the  good  were  to  be  received  into  eternal  felicity. 


2 1 8  Religion  for  To-day 

This  has  been  a  popular  doctrine  of  the  Church,  varied 
of  course  by  different  beliefs  here  and  different  beliefs 
there  throughout  the  larger  part  of  Christian  history. 

The  idea  that  most  of  us  hold  to-day, —  or  that  most  people 
jhold  to-day,  let  me  say  rather, —  that  the  minute  a  man  dies 
•his  soul  goes  either  to  hell  or  to  heaven,  is  really  a  very 
modern  idea,  not  the  one  which  has  been  held  generally  in 
the  history  of  the  Church. 

Now  that  you  may  see  how  real  this  other  world  has 
been  in  the  thought  of  men,  let  me  call  your  attention  for  a 
moment  to  that  marvellous  poem  of  Dante.  I  presume  the 
most  of  you  have  read  his  "  Inferno."  It  lets  you  into  the 
secret  of  the  thought  of  Christendom  in  the  Middle  Ages. 
Dante,  wandering  through  the  woods,  finds  a  place  where 
the  mouth  of  the  Infernal  Regions  may  be  entered.  He 
goes  through.  He  finds  Virgil  there.  Virgil  was  one  of 
the  noblest  men  of  the  old  pagan  era,  as  he  conceived 
him.  But  Virgil  could  not  go  to  heaven,  he  was  not  a 
Christian :  the  atoning  blood  did  not  apply  to  him ;  and 
Dante  could  not  find  it  in  his  heart  to  put  him  in  the  tortures 
of  the  Inferno ;  and  so  he  lives  in  a  sort  of  medium  kind  of 
place,  neither  suffering  very  much  nor  capable  of  the  high- 
est and  finest  joys.  The  beatific  vision,  the  reward  of  the 
saints,  could  never  be  open  to  him,  although  he  did  not 
share  the  torments  of  those  who  consciously  sinned  against 
the  light. 

This  reveals  the  thought  of  Dante  concerning  the  heroes 
of  the  extra-Christian  world. 

He  discovers  Hades  or  the  Inferno  under  the  ground,  its 
descending  circles  the  scene  of  different  degrees  of  punish- 
ment and  sin,  reaching  down  like  a  tunnel.  At  the  centre, 
instead  of  the  intense  heat,  the  lake  of  fire,  that  we  have 


Hell  and  Heaven  219 

been  accustomed  to  associate  with  that  world,  he  finds 
Satan  frozen  in  everlasting  ice.  This  is  the  culmination, 
and  the  worst  thing  that  Dante  was  able  to  conceive.  Dur- 
ing his  strange  journey,  the  poet  finds  the  spot  where  the 
stones  of  the  walls  had  been  misplaced,  when  Jesus  broke 
through  and  escaped. 

It  was  all  so  real  to  his  imagination  as  this. 

But,  in  ordinary  Protestant  thought,  for  two  hundred  years 
the  belief  has  sometimes  been  that  souls  went  directly  to 
hell  or  to  heaven,  and  then  came  back  again  to  be  re- 
united with  their  bodies  at  the  time  of  the  resurrection  just 
preceding  the  general  judgment,  or  else  that  they  lay  in 
this  quiescent  state,  this  intermediate  condition,  waiting  for 
the  resurrection  of  the  body, — one  or  the  other.  But  after 
that  all  the  bad  went  to  this  place  of  eternal  torture, 
hopeless,  and  without  any  end,  and  all  the  good  went 
straight  to  heaven,  there  to  be  happy  in  the  presence  of 
God  forevermore. 

Let  us  note  now  a  little  in  detail  who  were  to  be  the  in- 
habitants of  these  two  places. 

According  to  the  Catholic  creeds  there  is  no  chance 
for  anybody  to  be  saved  who  is  not  a  Catholic.  The 
Athanasian  Creed  says  you  must  believe  everything  that 
is  contained  in  that  or,  no  doubt,  you  must  perish  ever- 
lastingly. 

I  am  well  aware  that,  if  you  were  to  talk  with  any  intelli- 
gent priest  to-day,  he  would  tell  you  that  possible  leniency 
might  be  shown  towards  some  who  had  been  specially  noble 
in  the  olden  times,  and  that  the  mercy  of  God  might  extend 
to  those  that  had  been  ignorant  without  their  fault,  but  who 
had  tried  to  do  the  best  which  they  knew. 

But  there  has  been  little  chance  of  salvation  from  the 


220  Religion  fo7'  To-day 

point  of  view  of  any  particular  Church  for  any  except  those 
who  belonged  to  that  Church. 

The  Greek  Church  will  tell  you  that  you  must  be  ortho- 
dox, which  means  belong  to  their  Church,  in  order  to  be 
certain  of  salvation.  And  so  most  of  the  Protestant  denom- 
inations have  told  us  that  only  the  elect,  those  chosen  be- 
fore the  foundation  of  the  world,  chosen  without  any  regard 
to  their  character  or  what  their  course  of  life  should  be, 
chosen  from  the  mere  good  pleasure  of  God,  chosen  not 
because  they  were  worth  saving,  but  simply  to  illustrate 
the  grace,  the  mercy,  the  pity,  the  salvation  of  God, — 
that  these  were  the  only  ones  who  had  any  chance  of  going 
to  heaven ;  and  that,  no  matter  how  good  people  might  be, 
unless  they  have  been  chosen,  elected,  they  were  simply  to 
be  passed  by,  to  illustrate  the  justice  and  the  wrath  of  God 
through  all  eternity. 

Now  I  wish  to  suggest  to  you  one  or  two  things,  because, 
so  far  as  my  experience  goes,  in  talking  with  people,  there 
are  very  few  who  ever  do  any  thinking  on  these  matters.  I 
am  amazed  as  I  talk  with  people,  intelligent  in  every  other 
direction,  to  see  how  they  read  their  Bibles  merely  as  a  re- 
ligious exercise,  without  any  use  of  reason,  any  attempt  to 
understand,  comprehend,  really  what  it  is  that  they  read.  I 
talk  with  people  almost  every  week,  and  ask  them  if  they 
know  that  such  and  such  things  are  in  the  creeds  of  the 
churches  to  which  they  belong ;  and  they  have  never  thought 
of  it,  perhaps  never  have  read  the  creeds.  I  ask  them  if 
they  know  that  the  New  Testament  teaches  such  and  such 
a  thing :  they  never  thought  of  it,  they  never  read  the  New 
Testament  to  find  out  what  it  really  teaches. 

How  many  loving,  tender  mother  hearts  are  there  in  this 
city  of  New  York  to-day  who  know  that  the  printed  and 


Hell  and  Heaven  221 

published  creeds  of  the  Presbyterian  Church,  for  example, 
the  Prayer  Book  of  the  Episcopal,  the  Anglican  Church, — 
how  many  know  that  these  both  teach  to-day  the  damnation 
of  non-elect  and  unbaptized  infants  ? 

And  yet  this  is  true.  And  how  terribly  real  this  belief  is 
on  the  part  of  Catholics  !  I  can  give  you  a  personal  illustra- 
tion. When  I  was  living  in  California,  there  was  a  man,  my 
neighbor,  one  of  the  roughest,  most  profane  men  I  ever 
knew,  but  a  devout  Catholic.  And  his  little  baby-girl  was 
very  ill,  and  he  thought  she  was  going  to  die ;  and  he  came 
to  me,  a  Protestant,  because  he  had  no  time  to  find  a  priest, 
frantic  with  anxiety,  to  ask  that  I  should  come  and  baptize 
his  child,  so  that,  if  it  died  before  morning,  it  would  not  go  to 
an  eternal  hell.  The  Catholic  Church  allows  that  kind  of 
baptism,  if  no  other  can  be  obtained.  It  will  allow  a  nurse, 
anybody,  to  baptize  an  infant,  if  a  priest  cannot  be  found. 

Why  1  To  save  that  tiny  infant  from  the  flaming  eter- 
nal wrath  of  the  Almighty.     Think  of  it ! 

Just  consider  I  The  father  of  a  child  like  this  meets  with 
an  accident  on  the  way  to  a  priest,  or  on  the  way  to  me,  if 
he  is  not  able  to  find  a  priest,  or  he  is  not  able  to  find  me  or 
anybody  else  to  act  as  a  substitute.  And  this  little  child,  if 
the  priest  had  got  there  in  time  or  I  had  arrived  in  time 
to  place  a  little  water  on  its  forehead  and  say  a  few  words 
over  it,  would  have  gone  to  heaven,  and  God  would  have 
loved  it  and  cared  for  it  forever.  But,  just  because  I  am  a 
little  late  in  getting  there,  God  hates  and  curses  and  tor- 
ments it  forever ! 

Friends,  think  of  it !  In  this  nineteenth  century  after 
Jesus,  in  the  midst  of  our  boasted  intelligence  and  civiliza- 
tion, the  prayer-books  and  the  creeds  of  the  greatest  and 
most  popular  churches  in  the   world  still  teaching  an  un- 


222  Religion  for  To-day 

speakably  infernal  character  like  that,  and  attributing  it  to 
our  Father  in  heaven !  And  intelligent,  cultivated,  tender- 
hearted, loving  fathers  and  mothers  supporting  such  churches, 
and  not  demanding  that  the  infamous  lie  be  stricken  out  of 
the  books ! 

Who  is  to  go  to  hell,  then  ? 

If  you  trace  the  history  of  Christendom  for  the  last  eigh- 
teen hundred  years,  half  of  the  noblest  men  of  Europe  have 
gone  there,  half  of  the  noblest  men  of  America.  Every  man 
with  manhood  enough  in  him  to  do  any  thinking,  to  ask  any 
questions,  puts  himself  in  danger  of  hell.  Every  man  clear- 
headed enough  to  have  a  nobler  idea  of  God  than  the 
popular  creeds  taught  him  and  brave  enough  to  speak  his 
thoughts  has  gone  hopelessly  to  hell.  The  great  liberators 
and  leaders  go  to  hell.  Men  like  Tyndall,  Huxley,  Darwin 
go  to  hell.  Those  who  help  the  world  out  of  its  ignorance 
and  superstition,  and  up  into  the  light,  go  to  hell. 

I  said  once,  where  Mr.  Moody  was  conducting  a  revival 
service,  that,  if  he  would  pick  out  the  people  that  he  was 
going  to  take  with  him  to  his  particular  kind  of  heaven,  I 
would  gladly  go  with  the  rest,  wherever  it  might  be. 

Consider,  friends,  now  for  a  moment,  what  reason  is  there 
to-day  why  we  should  believe  this  horrible  doctrine  of  hell, 
—  that,  unless  a  person  is  saved  according  to  the  particular 
method  of  a  particular  Church,  he  is  to  go  there  ? 

How  is  anybody  to  know  ?  The  Catholic  Church  has  one 
way  of  saving,  the  Greek  Church  another.  Different  Prot- 
estant denominations  all  have  their  different  ways.  How 
is  a  poor  bewildered  seeker  to  know  which  one  is  the  real 
way? 

But  what  reason  is  there  why  we  should  believe  that  God 
has  ever  created  any  such  place,  or  that  he  sends  any  one 


Hell  and  Heaven  223 

there,  hopelessly  to  inhabit  a  prison  of  darkness  and  torture 
world  without  end?  Is  there  any  reason  why  you  and  I 
or  any  intelligent  person  should  believe  anything  of  the 
kind  to-day  ?  If  there  is,  I  for  one  have  never  been  able  to 
discover  it. 

What  are  these  hells  ?  They  are  simply  the  reflections 
in  the  other  world  of  the  cruel,  ignorant,  revengeful,  bar- 
baric, torturing  kind  of  people  who  invented  them.  Visit 
the  Bastile  before  it  was  pulled  down  by  the  indignant 
people  of  Paris,  and  see  there  a  man,  for  no  crime  except 
that  he  won  the  enmity —  perhaps  because  of  his  nobility  — 
of  some  lord  or  king.  Behold  him  in  some  loathsome  dun- 
geon, dripping  with  foul  water,  full  of  toads  and  snakes  and 
vermin  of  every  conceivable  kind.  Think  of  him  rotting 
year  after  year,  so  long  as  life  could  remain  in  his  body,  in 
a  dungeon  like  that,  for  no  crime  at  all ;  and  think  of  the 
persons  who  put  him  there,  dancing  their  butterfly  existence 
away,  utterly  untroubled  in  their  pleasures  or  their  sleep  by 
the  memory  of  what  he  is  passing  through.  And  then  you 
can  understand  how  people  in  that  stage  of  barbarism 
could  invent  hells  in  the  other  world,  too, —  only  the  natural 
expression  of  the  kind  of  barbarism  with  which  they  visited 
those  whom  they  regarded  as  their  enemies  in  this  life. 

Is  there  any  reason  for  our  believing  theological  concep- 
tions of  men  like  that?  That  is  two  hundred  years  ago 
perhaps.  Go  back  to  the  Middle  Ages,  come  to  the  time  of 
the  Borgias,  visit  the  ancient  time  when  it  was  part  of  the 
pleasure  of  the  people  to  see  gladiatorial  shows, —  men 
killed  for  the  delectation  of  gentlemen  and  ladies  who 
wished  for  a  sensation  !  You  need  not  go  back  very  far. 
Look  at  Spain  to-day,  the  most  orthodox  nation  of  Europe, 
with  its  delectation  for  the  lady  and  little  child  and  priest 


224  Religion  for  To-day 

in  its  bull  fight.  Go  back  until  you  come  to  the  time  of  a 
Nero,  back  and  down,  and  take  their  imaginings  of  God 
and  of  the  other  life,  and  crystallize  them  into  creeds,  and 
tell  us  that  we  must  be  bound  hand  and  foot,  brain,  heart, 
forever,  to  believe  their  crude  and  cruel  and  horrible  dreams 
about  God  and  the  other  life ! 

Right  in  there  is  the  birthplace  of  all  the  hells  that  the 
hideous  and  cruel  imaginings  of  the  world  have  ever 
invented. 

Let  any  one  point  to  me  a  text  in  the  Bible,  and  say  that 
I  must  accept  it  as  teaching  a  doctrine  of  eternal  torment. 
Friends,  let  me  say  deliberately, —  and  I  mean  every  word 
that  I  speak, —  if  the  doctrine  of  eternal  hell  was  taught  in 
large  and  plain  letters  on  every  page  of  that  book  from 
beginning  to  end,  if  every  writer  had  signed  his  belief  in 
such  a  doctrine  in  the  presence  of  a  notary  of  his  time,  I 
would  reject  it  indignantly  and  with  all  my  soul!  No 
amount  of  human  belief,  no  quantity  of  human  testimony, 
can  make  me  believe  that  the  God  of  this  universe  is  a  devil. 
No  writings  and  no  men,  however  numerous  or  great,  shall 
make  me  doubt  the  eternal  and  universal  Fatherhood  of  him 
who  tells  us  to  think  of  him  as  our  tender  Father,  and  of 
ourselves  as  his  poor,  weak,  and  troubled  children. 

There  is  no  possible  way  of  proving  such  a  hideous  be- 
lief as  this.  I  brand  it  as  a  slander  on  God,  and  will  trust 
my  soul  to  the  issue. 

Now,  then,  let  us  come  to  the  modern  world.  If  there 
be  no  place  called  hell  that  is  eternal  in  its  nature,  if 
there  be  no  place  called  heaven  that  is  changeless  in  its 
nature,  what  are  we  to  believe  concerning  the  destiny  of 
souls  after  they  leave  this  world  ? 

Are    all   to   be   treated   alike  ?     Does   everybody   go    to 


Hell  and  Heaven  225 

heaven?  Does  it  'make  no  difference  what  a  man  thinks 
or  speaks,  or  how  he  conducts  himself,  or  what  kind  of 
character  he  develops  here  ? 

It  seems  to  me  clear  that  it  makes  all  the  difference 
in  the  world.  I  do  not  claim  to  know  in  detail  about  that 
other  life.  I  never  expect  to  know  in  detail  about  it  until  I 
get  there  and  study  its  conditions  for  myself ;  for  let  me  ask 
you  to  note  carefully  one  special  thing.  We  may  be  able, 
and  I  believe  we  shall  be,  as  I  intimated  to  you  last  Sun- 
day, to  demonstrate  continued  existence.  That,  however,  is 
entirely  another  thing  from  our  being  able  to  investigate  the 
details  of  that  other  life.  Just  in  so  far  as  that  other  life 
transcends  the  present  and  is  unlike  it,  just  in  so  far  it  must 
remain  unknown  to  us  until  we  come  into  contact  with  it  by 
our  own  personal  experience. 

Let  me  illustrate  what  I  mean.  You  talk  with  a  boy  four 
years  old,  and  you  have  got  to  keep  down  to  the  four-year- 
old  level.  You  cannot  put  ten-year-old  ideas  into  the  four- 
year-old  head.  I  am  referring  now,  of  course,  to  normal 
children.  You  cannot  put  into  the  ten-year-old  head  fifteen- 
year-old  ideas  and  thoughts  and  comprehensions.  You  are 
limited  by  the  person's  conception  and  ability  to  think  with 
whom  you  are  speaking. 

A  boy  asks  you  what  it  means  to  be  a  man.  You  cannot 
tell  him.  A  little  girl  asks  her  mother  what  it  means  to  be 
a  woman.  She  cannot  tell  her.  We  know  we  can  interpret 
to  the  child  only  what  the  child  can  understand. 

Suppose  I  visit  Central  Africa,  and  come  back  and  tell 
you  I  have  made  a  wonderful  discovery  there,  and  you  say. 
What  is  it  ?  And  I  say.  It  is  unlike  anything  you  ever  saw. 
What  color  ?  It  is  a  new  color.  What  shape  ?  you  say. 
Well,  not  the  shape  of  anything  you  ever  saw.     How  can  I 


226  Religion  for  To-day 

describe  it?  The  only  way  I  can  describe  anything  to  a 
person  who  has  never  seen  it  is  to  compare  it  with  some- 
thing which  he  has  seen. 

So  that,  if  this  life  is  above  and  beyond  and  entirely  un- 
like what  we  have  become  accustomed  to  by  experience, 
then  it  must  remain  in  that  sense  unknown,  because  all  our 
knowledge  is  limited  by  our  experience. 

I  may  then  be  able  to  demonstrate  the  fact,  though  I  may 
not  be  able  to  answer  any  of  your  questions  as  to  details, — 
the  kind  of  life,  the  kind  of  country,  the  kind  of  bodies  we 
shall  possess,  the  kind  of  occupations  in  which  we  shall 
engage. 

Where  are  hell  and  heaven  in  the  modern  and  rational 
thought  of  the  universe  ? 

In  the  first  place  let  me  call  your  attention  to  the 
changed  conceptions  which  astronomy  has  made  us  familiar 
with.  There  is  no  heaven  just  over  this  dome  of  blue. 
There  is  no  dome  of  blue,  except  to  our  eyes.  There  is  no 
hell  underground;  for  we  have  found  that  the  world  is  a 
globe,  and  is  spinning  forever  through  space. 

Where  is  hell  ?  where  is  heaven  ? 

I  remember  sermons  of  Spurgeon  and  Dr.  Talmage  in 
which  they  have  indulged  in  flights  of  imagination  in  this 
direction.  One,  I  remember,  located  heaven  on  the  sup- 
posed central  star  of  the  universe,  around  which  everything 
else  revolved.  Now  there  may  be  such  a  central  star ;  but 
nobody  knows  anything  about  it.  If  there  is,  how  far 
away  is  it?  So  far  away  that  it  takes  light  perhaps 
millions  of  years  to  traverse  the  space.  How  long  would 
it  take  a  soul  to  go  to  heaven  if  it  were  located  there  ?  It 
would  take  a  train  of  cars  somewhere  between  one  and  two 
hundred  years,  travelling  at  the  rate  of  sixty  miles  an  hour 


Hell  and  Heaven  227 

and  twenty-four  hours  a  day,  to  reach  the  sun  of  our 
little  system. 

It  is  idle,  then,  for  us  to  speculate  about  heaven's  being 
the  centre  of  the  universe. 

I  incline  to  believe  that  the  spirit  world  is  all  about  us.  I 
do  not  know  any  reason  in  the  world  for  placing  it  away  off 
somewhere  else,  except  the  impulse  resulting  from  our  in- 
herited ideas.  I  believe  that  the  spirit  world  may  coexist 
with  this  planetary  system  of  ours,  and  the  good  and  the 
bad  be  kept  no  further  away,  some  of  them,  than  people  are 
who  live  in  the  next  street  or  in  the  next  State. 

I  have  had  a  great  many  people  ask  me  this  question: 
Are  the  good  and  the  bad  going  to  be  all  together  in  the 
next  world  t  Would  it  not  be  necessary  for  the  happiness  of 
the  good  that  they  should  be  fenced  away  somewhere  by 
themselves,  and  the  bad  fenced  away  and  kept  somewhere 
else.?  And,  then,  I  have  asked  them  a  question  which 
never  seems  to  occur  to  them,  as  to  whether  the  good  and 
the  bad  are  any  more  together  in  this  world  than  they  want 
to  be. 

No  bad  people  except  those  I  wanted  have  ever  troubled 
me  or  haunted  me  very  much.  People  do  not  thrust  them- 
selves on  the  society  of  other  people,  generally,  unless  they 
find  some  encouragement.  People  in  this  world  may  pass 
each  other  on  the  sidewalk,  one  of  them  in  hell,  and  the 
other  in  heaven.  They  may  touch  elbows,  and  yet  be 
further  apart  in  their  thoughts,  their  mental  states,  their 
characters,  their  careers,  their  destinies,  than  the  stars  in 
space  are  from  each  other. 

These  spiritual  facts,  spiritual  conditions,  solve  a  good 
many  of  these  problems  for  us,  if  we  give  them  a  little 
reasonable  attention. 


228  Religion  for  To-day 

I  do  not  see  any  reason  for  fencing  the  good  people  and 
the  bad  people  away  from  each  other.  I  would  not  like  to 
be  fenced  in  anywhere,  if  I  had  my  way,  even  in  heaven. 

And,  in  the  next  place,  I  beUeve  that  one  of  the  charac- 
teristics of  heaven  —  the  heavenly  state  of  mind  and  heart  — 
will  be  the  eternal  opportunity  to  help  people  less  developed 
and  less  well  off  than  yourself.  I  do  not  want  to  be  fenced 
away  from  hell.  I  have  a  good  deal  of  sympathy  with  that 
old  New  England  deacon  who  had  a  grand  Christian  char- 
acteristic in  his  heart.  When  he  was  asked  if,  at  the  last 
day,  he  should  find  he  had  made  a  mistake  and  was  not 
going  to  be  saved,  but  was  going  to  hell,  and  in  that  case 
what  he  should  do,  he  said  he  thought  he  should  start  a 
little  prayer-meeting. 

According  to  his  ideas,  he  was  going  to  help  the  people 
there.  That  was  Christianity.  This  idea  of  going  off  into 
a  selfish  heaven,  and  letting  the  rest  of  the  universe  take 
care  of  itself,  is  a  libel  on  the  deepest  and  most  Christian 
traits  of  humanity.  It  would  be  a  libel  on  paganism  even. 
For  any  decent  man  is  better  than  that. 

Let  me  read  you  here  one  little  word  from  the  Buddh- 
ist literature  of  China, —  one  of  the  sweetest  things  I 
ever  saw,  and  with  which  we  may  contrast  some  of  our  Puri- 
tan literature :  "  Never  will  I  seek  or  receive  private  indi- 
vidual salvation ;  never  will  I  enter  into  final  peace  alone ; 
but  forever  and  ever  and  everywhere  I  will  live  and  strive 
for  the  universal  redemption  of  every  creature  throughout 
all  the  worlds." 

I  do  not  wish  to  be  shut  away  from  bad  people,  then.  I 
believe  one  of  the  grandest  things  in  the  other  life  will  be 
what  has  been  to  me,  at  any  rate,  one  of  the  grandest  things 
in  this, —  the  endeavor  to  help  somebody  who  does  not  know 


Hell  and  Heaven  229 

quite  as  much  as  I  have  had  an  opportunity  to  know ;  to  lift 
somebody,  to  lead  somebody,  to  do  something  to  make  his 
life  a  little  sweeter,  a  little  easier  for  him. 

Heaven,  then,  and  hell  are  not  essentially  places  any- 
where :  they  are  conditions,  states  of  heart,  character.  Take 
that  verse  of  Omar  Khayyam,  the  old  Persian  poet  of  the 
twelfth  century :  — 

"  I  sent  my  soul  into  the  invisible, 
Some  letter  of  that  after  life  to  spell ; 

And  by  and  by  my  soul  returned  to  me, 
And  answered,  '  I  myself  am  heaven  and  hell, — 

"  Heaven  but  the  vision  of  fulfilled  desire, 
And  hell  the  shadow  of  a  soul  on  fire.' " 

That  is  heaven,  there  is  hell. 

What  shall  be  our  occupations  in  another  life  ?  It  seems 
to  me  eminently  reasonable,  though  I  do  not  claim  to  know, 
that  I  should  suggest  something  along  these  lines.  If  a 
man  who  has  been  living  in  Northern  New  England  moves 
to  Southern  California,  there  will  be  a  good  many  things 
that  he  was  accustomed  to  do  in  that  cold  and  barren  win- 
try climate  that  there  will  be  no  need  for  his  doing  in  his 
new  home.  Changed  conditions  suggest  a  change  of  occu- 
pation within  certain  limits. 

There  will  be  a  good  many  things  that  we  have  to  do 
here  that  we  shall  not  need  to  continue  doing  in  the  other 
life.  I  believe,  mark  you,  that  we  shall  have  bodies  there 
as  real,  intensely  more  real  and  alive,  than  our  present 
bodies.     I  have  not  time  to  go  into  that  this  morning. 

I  see  no  reason  why  we  should  not  continue  our  scientific 
investigations. 

Socrates,   while   he  was   talking   with  his  disciples,  just 


230  Religion  for  To-day 

before  he  drank  the  hemlock,  said  he  thought  he  should 
be  able  to  continue  his  studies  in  that  new  life  on  which 
he  was  entering.  I  do  not  see  why  scientific  investigation 
should  not  be  carried  on  there  as  it  is  not  possible  to  carry 
it  on  here. 

Old  ex-President  Hill,  the  grand  Unitarian  preacher 
and  famous  mathematician,  when  somebody  asked  him 
what  he  expected  to  do  in  heaven,  answered  that  there 
were  enough  mathematical  questions  connected  with  the  arc 
of  a  circle  to  keep  him  busy  for  several  thousands  of  years. 

Why  should  we  not  carry  on  our  studies  t  Why  should 
not  art,  in  all  its  departments,  and  literature  be  developed 
there?  Will  Shakspere  care  no  more  for  the  drama,  for 
the  magnificent  creations  of  character  that  have  made  him 
famous  here?  Will  Liszt,  Mozart,  Mendelssohn,  care  no 
more  for  music  ?  The  great  masters  be  no  more  interested 
in  painting  ? 

Why  should  not  all  these  things  that  pertain  to  the  mind, 
the  soul,  heart,  find  room  not  only,  but  unspeakable  expan- 
sion, limitless  growth  beyond  anything  that  we  can  compre- 
hend here  ? 

Such,  then,  it  seems  to  me,  may  be  our  dream  of  the 
future.  Not  far  away,  not  separated  from  the  ignorant 
and  the  bad,  whom  we  may  be  permitted  to  help.  For 
mind  you,  the  ignorant  and  the  bad,  those  who  break  the 
laws  of  this  universe,  knowingly  or  unknowingly,  must  work 
out  their  deliverance  from  their  conditions,  whether  it  takes 
six  months  or  a  year,  or  a  thousand  years  or  a  milHon. 
Broken  law,  the  result  of  broken  law,  must  follow  us  as  a 
shadow  follows  the  sun. 

May  we  not,  then,  look  forward  to  the  fact  that,  when  we 
pass  through  that  gate,  on  the  other  side  we  are  just  what 


Hell  and  Heaven  231 

we  were  when  we  entered  ?  There  is  opportunity  for  us  to 
go  up  or  down,  opportunity  for  us  to  help,  to  study,  to  grow, 
to  be  all  that  is  possible  for  us  to  achieve.  There  in  that 
future,  under  the  guidance  of  our  Father,  in  that  realm  of 
spirit  we  may  pursue  the  pathway  that  we  have  begun  here, 
thinking  out  after  him  God's  thoughts,  rising  to  higher  and 
nobler  views  of  him,  and  so  finding  an  increasing  joy  and 
peace  forever  and  ever. 


THE    CHURCH    OF   YESTERDAY,  TO-DAY, 
AND    TO-MORROW. 


Jesus  founded  no  church.  He  gave  no  directions  as  to 
any  organization  whatsoever,  he  specified  no  officers  or 
rulers,  he  ieft  on  record  no  directions  as  to  any  creed  bond 
intended  to  bind  his  disciples  together.  And  yet  the 
Church,  as  you  will  see,  as  I  go  on,  was  a  natural  and 
necessary  outgrowth  of  that  which  Jesus  did.  I  wish,  how- 
ever, to  begin  by  this  perfectly  outright  and  downright 
statement,  because  so  many  persons  claim  to  trace  back 
to  the  words  of  Jesus  himself  an  authority,  a  method  of 
organization,  a  system  of  rites  or  ceremonies,  a  creed,  for 
which  he  is  in  no  sense  responsible. 

Indeed,  if  you  consider  the  conditions  for  the  first  twenty- 
five  years  after  Jesus'  death,  you  will  see  that  the  idea  of 
anybody's  expecting  a  church  to  be  formed  which  should 
continue  for  the  next  eighteen  hundred  years  is  absurd. 

If  Jesus  taught  anything  with  perfect  explicitness, —  that 
is,  on  the  supposition  that  he  is  correctly  reported, —  it  is 
that  he  should  return  in  the  clouds  of  heaven,  and  bring  the 
present  order  of  affairs  to  an  end,  and  set  up,  miraculously 
and  suddenly,  the  heavenly  kingdom  within  twenty-five 
years  of  the  time  when  he  spoke.  He  says  explicitly,  when 
they  asked  him  the  time  for  this  great  change  to  come, 
"Before  this  generation  passes  away,"  —  this  was  the  time. 

If,  then,  the  present  order  of  affairs  was  to  cease  within 


The  Church  233 

a  generation,  do  you  not  see  that  neither  Jesus  nor  the 
disciples  could  have  expected  the  organization  of  any- 
church  that  should  extend  its  influence  over  the  world 
and  reach  up  the  ages  ?  Do  you  not  see  that  such  an  idea 
could  never  have  entered  into  their  minds  ? 

Jesus,  then,  founded  no  church,  made  no  provision  for 
its  future  here  on  earth.  But,  as  years  passed  by  and  the 
expected  appearance  in  the  heavens  did  not  take  place,  the 
disciples  naturally  grouped  themselves  together  into  little 
bodies,  at  first  not  organized  at  all,  a  mere  meeting  of 
brethren  and  sisters  in  sympathy  with  each  other  and  trying 
to  help  each  other,  and  then  becoming  loosely  organized,  in 
the  most  natural  way  in  the  world.  They  would  wish  some 
officers,  some  one  to  look  after  affairs ;  and  so  an  "  elder," 
some  person  who  was  looked  upon  with  reverence,  some 
one  who  possessed  special  efficiency  for  managing  the  busi- 
ness side  of  affairs,  would  be  selected,  and  the  church 
would  be  modelled  at  first  very  much  on  the  synagogue, 
which  existed  all  over  the  world  wherever  there  were  any 
Hebrews  living. 

It  has  been  said  that,  if  there  had  been  no  synagogue, 
there  would  have  been  no  church.  In  a  certain  sense,  this 
is  true ;  but  the  church  naturally  organized  itself.  The 
people  who  revered  Jesus  and  loved  his  memory  and  be- 
lieved in  his  mission  would  come  together  on  Sunday 
morning, —  the  morning  when  they  believed  he  reappeared 
after  his  death, —  and  hold  their  religious  and  memorial 
services. 

But  these  churches  claimed  no  authority  at  first,  and  no 
one  claimed  any  authority  over  them ;  and  they  had  no  fixed 
ritual,  they  had  no  definite  ceremonies,  they  had  no  deter- 
mined creed.     The  only  condition   of   membership   was    a 


234  Religion  for  To-day 

desire  on  the  part  of  any  one  to  do  honor  to  their  waited 
leader  and  to  enter  into  the  fellowship  of  this  new  spirit 
^vhich  had  come  into  the  hearts  of  men. 

But  by  and  by,  as  churches  grew  in  influence,  as  they 
-were  organized  in  the  great  centres  of  civilization, — 
Ephesus,  Corinth,  Antioch,  Rome, —  as  the  churches  grew 
strong,  and  at  last  were  recognized  as  a  political  power  even 
throughout  the  Empire,  do  you  not  see  how  naturally  the 
organization  would  grow  ?  They  would  have  their  officers, 
elders,  called  presbyters,  a  word  which  we  have  retained 
until  the  present  day ;  and  by  and  by  there  would  be  some 
man  of  commanding  influence,  and  he  would  obtain  the 
office  of  bishop. 

But  let  us  note  how  simple  an  office  that  was  at  the  out- 
set :  the  word  "  bishop  "  means  merely  an  overseer,  a  super- 
intendent, some  one  who  has  an  oversight  of  affairs, —  that 
is  all. 

By  and  by,  just  as  the  Methodists  organized  themselves 
in  this  country,  there  would  be  a  group  of  churches  each 
having  its  own  officers,  and  then  some  one  superintendent 
of  this  group, —  some  one  having  the  charge  of  church 
extension  beyond  the  limits  of  organization  at  that  time. 

And  by  and  by,  modelling  themselves  after  the  earthly 
governments  with  which  they  were  familiar,  we  find  men 
of  eminence  and  power  claiming  to  exercise  authority  over 
not  only  the  individual  church,  but  groups  of  churches,  made 
up  of  those  that  existed  in  some  one  particular  province 
or  geographical  locality.  And,  in  a  perfectly  natural  way, 
it  came  to  pass  at  last  that  the  bishop  at  Rome  asserted 
supreme  authority  over  other  bishops  and  other  churches. 

Why  ?  I  wish  you  to  note  the  naturalness  of  the  steps  by 
which  this  condition  of  things  came  about.     As  I  said,  there 


The  Church  235 

was  no  settled  order  of  worship,  there  was  no  settled  creed, 
there  were  no  settled  forms  or  ceremonies  of  any  kind.  So 
churches  differed  from  each  other  in  their  methods  or  ideas. 
But  by  and  by  it  would  occur  to  somebody  that  there  ought 
to  be  some  concerted  uniformity ;  that  the  churches  ought 
to  have  a  service  of  similar  character  in  different  parts  of 
the  Empire ;  that  they  ought  to  be  united  in  their  methods 
and  ways ;  that  there  ought  to  be  some  one  type  of  govern- 
ment. It  was  thus,  perhaps,  that  the  church  of  Ephesus 
and  the  church  of  Corinth  would  get  into  a  dispute  as  to 
which  should  have  its  way:  Ephesus  would  think  the 
Corinthian  church  ought  to  adopt  its  method ;  and  the 
church  at  Corinth  would  think  the  church  at  Ephesus  ought 
to  adopt  its  method.  A  case  like  this  is  suggested  only  by 
way  of  illustration. 

And  by  and  by,  perhaps,  they  would  leave  it  out  to  be 
arbitrated  by  some  man  looked  up  to  with  reverence,  sup- 
posed to  have  the  interests  of  the  whole  at  heart,  and 
to  have  some  special  wisdom  in  settling  affairs ;  and  he 
would  be  looked  up  to  as  the  one  to  decide  these  matters. 
Naturally,  a  metropolitan  minister  —  that  is,  a  minister  who 
was  the  servant  of  some  great  church  in  some  great  city  — 
would  almost  inevitably  be  called  upon  to  settle  such 
differences.  And,  therefore,  the  overseer  of  the  church  at 
Rome,  which  was  the  centre  and  capital  of  the  Empire, 
would  almost  inevitably  be  chosen.  He  was  chosen,  chosen 
over  and  over  again,  until  by  and  by  that  which  had  been 
extended  to  him  as  a  matter  of  courtesy  he  began  to  claim 
as  a  matter  of  right.  And  the  idea  grew  up  that  the  first 
overseer  of  the  first  church  in  Rome  had  had  the  keys  of  the 
kingdom  of  heaven  and  of  hell  committed  to  his  keeping, 
and  that  he  had  a  right  of  lordship  over  the  Church. 


236  Religion  for  To-day 

I  feel  perfectly  certain  —  I  cannot  enter  into  the  dis- 
cussion this  morning,  giving  you  my  reasons  —  that  those 
words,  conferring  the  keys  upon  Peter,  are  an  interpolation 
and  an  after-thought,  an  invention  of  that  same  Church 
which  invented  the  fraudulent  decretals  on  which  it  based 
its  claim  to  exercise  temporal  power ;  for  Jesus  himself 
says  explicitly  —  and  I  do  not  believe  he  would  contradict 
himself  on  a  central  point  like  this  —  that  the  kings  of  the 
earth  exercise  lordship  and  they  that  are  great  assert 
authority  over  their  fellows,  but  "it  shall  not  be  so  among 
you  "  :  he  that  is  great  is  simply  to  be  servant. 

But  by  and  by,  as  I  said,  the  Bishop  of  Rome  began  to 
assert  the  right  to  dictate  to  all  the  other  churches  as  to 
how  they  should  conduct  their  affairs,  as  to  matters  of  belief, 
as  to  matters  of  conduct,  ceremony, —  whatsoever  concerned 
the  organization  and  welfare  of  the  Church.  But  Constan- 
tine  removed  the  capital  of  the  Empire  to  Constantinople, 
and  so  there  was  another  great  bishop  there  ;  and  for  a  long 
time  the  conflict  was  intense  and  bitter  between  these  two 
bishops  as  to  which  should  be  recognized  as  the  head  of 
the  Church. 

There  were,  of  course,  doctrinal  disputes  also  ;  but  the 
reason  why  we  have  a  Greek  church  to-day  and  a  Roman 
church  is  to  be  found  in  the  fact  that  neither  the  Bishop  of 
Rome  nor  the  Bishop  of  Constantinople  would  bow  to  the 
other,  and  so  they  split  the  Church  in  two.  And  from  that 
day  to  this  each  has  claimed  original  authority  and  power 
and  headship  conferred  by  Jesus  himself. 

This,  then,  is  the  way  —  and  you  see  how  purely  natural 
it  is  —  that  the  Church  grew  from  the  first  simple  begin- 
nings until  it  claimed  lordship  over,  not  only  this  world,  but 
the  other. 


The  Church  237 

I  wish  you  to  note  now  a  few  points  touching  the  claims 
that  the  Church  has  made  in  the  past. 

In  the  first  place,  you  know  that  until  within  a  very  short 
time  the  Church  has  claimed  —  and  some  different  parts  of 
the  Church  make  the  claim  still  —  that  it,  and  it  alone,  stood 
here  on  earth  as  the  mouthpiece  and  the  arm  of  God.  The 
Church  has  claimed  that  it  held  in  its  hands  the  destiny  of 
human  souls ;  that  it  had  divine  authority  to  shut  up  heaven 
or  to  open  it,  to  shut  up  hell  or  to  open  it,  to  shut  up 
purgatory  or  to  open  it.  The  Church  claimed  to  stand  and 
speak  and  act  for  the  Almighty.  It  not  only  made  this 
claim  concerning  the  other  world,  but  it  claimed  to  hold  all 
the  affairs  of  this  world  in  its  hands  as  well.  The  Church 
has  claimed  to  be  able  to  work  miracles,  to  control  natural 
law,  to  govern  all  the  affairs  of  human  life. 

The  Church  has  stood  by  the  cradle,  and  by  its  magic 
touch  has  claimed  to  change  the  new-born  child  from  a 
child  of  the  devil  to  a  child  of  God.  It  has  claimed  to 
direct  the  education  of  the  child  from  the  very  first  until  it 
had  come  to  be  a  man. 

The  Church  has  claimed  the  power  of  turning  the  un- 
healthy—  and  as  it  claimed  the  unholy  —  fires  of  human 
passion  into  the  pure  white  flame  of  sacred  love.  It  has 
claimed  the  power  to  speed  the  weak  and  faltering  footsteps 
of  the  old  man,  as  he  crossed  the  threshold  at  the  other 
confine  of  life,  and  to  give  him  safe  passage  through  the 
dark  shadow  and  entrance  into  eternal  felicity. 

The  Church  has  claimed  and  exercised  the  power  to  set 
up  kings  and  overturn  them.  It  has  claimed  the  power  to 
send  an  army  out  with  the  blessing  of  God  upon  it  and 
the  assurance  of  victory  or  to  threaten  it  for  dis- 
obedience with  defeat.     The  Church  has  claimed  to  con- 


238  Religion  for  To-day 

trol  the  winds  and  the  seas,  so  that,  when  the  mariner 
started  out  upon  his  voyage,  the  priest  behind  with  cere- 
mony and  prayer  assured  him  safety  upon  the  great  deep. 

The  Church  has  claimed  to  control  the  prosperity  of  the 
agriculturist,  the  farmer;  to  be  able  to  send  drought  or 
the  needed  rains ;  to  give  fertility  or  to  blight  all  the 
promise  of  the  crops.  The  Church  has  held  the  prosperity 
of  the  merchant  in  its  hands. 

There  is  not  a  single  department  of  human  life  that  the 
Church  has  not  claimed  to  touch  with  magic,  miraculous 
power,  and  to  control.  Not  only  that,  it  has  set  the  limits 
to  thought;  it  has  absorbed  music  and  art;  it  has  told 
philosophy  what  subjects  it  might  investigate,  what  airs 
might  be  fanned  by  its  ambitious  wings,  to  what  safe 
perch  it  must  come  after  its  audacious  flights. 

The  Church  has  claimed  the  right  to  tell  people  what 
they  must  think  about  this  universe,  as  to  when  it  was 
created,  and  why  and  how.  It  has  claimed  the  right  to 
tell  men  that  they  must  accept  its  ideas  as  to  the  origin  and 
the  nature  as  well  as  the  destiny  of  man.  It  has  set  the 
limits  to  all  scientific  investigation,  saying.  You  may  study 
as  much  as  you  please  and  as  widely  as  you  please ;  but, 
if  you  do  not  come  back  at  last,  and  settle  down  contentedly 
within  the  boundaries  of  the  creeds  which  I  have  fixed 
forever,  then  you  must  be  looked  upon  in  heaven  and  earth 
as  anathema. 

This  has  been  the  Church's  claim  over  this  world. 

But  the  Church  has  not  been  all  evil.  I  frankly  say  to 
you,  friends,  that,  as  I  study  carefully  the  history  of  the 
last  fifteen  hundred  years,  I  find  myself  wondering  some- 
times as  to  whether  the  world  would  not  have  been  better 
if  the  Church  had  not  existed.     For  the  Church, —  note  this. 


The  Church  239 

please, —  the  Church  has  originated  and  taught  no  ethical 
ideas  that  did  not  exist  before,  nothing  higher,  finer, 
sweeter,  diviner,  more  human,  than  can  be  found  in  India, 
in  Egypt,  in  China,  in  ancient  Greece,  in  Rome.  While  the 
Church  has  asserted  its  sovereignty  over  man,  it  has  done  all 
it  could  to  prevent  the  free  growth  and  development  of 
intellect.  It  has  made  it  a  sin  to  think ;  and  those  nations 
that  have  submitted  to  the  dictation  of  the  Church  most 
completely  have  been  crushed  down  intellectually  to  a  level 
below  mediocrity. 

The  Church  has  the  effrontery  sometimes  to  claim  that 
everything  in  the  way  of  modern  civilization,  intelligence, 
freedom,  hope  for  man,  is  its  gift.  And  yet  I  defy  any  man 
on  the  face  of  the  earth  to  point  out  a  single  step  in  ad- 
vance in  the  way  of  the  world's  thinking  that  has  not  been 
banned  and  cursed  by  some  representative  of  the  Church. 
The  Church  has  stood  in  the  way  of  every  invention,  every 
discovery.  All  the  great  names  from  Copernicus  to  Darwin 
have  been  pointed  at  as  those  who  were  to  be  avoided  by 
those  who  have  officially  represented  the  Church. 

And,  then,  the  Church  has  done  another  great  evil  to  the 
world:  it  has  placed  the  emphasis  always  on  belief  and 
loyalty  to  its  own  organization,  on  something  else  than  char- 
acter. For,  while  the  Church  has  claimed  to  have  the  keys 
of  the  kingdom  of  heaven,  it  has  never  proposed  to  let  any 
man  in  merely  because  he  was  good,  never  because  he  was 
Christ-like.  It  is  the  man  who  believes  what  she  says  he 
must  believe ;  it  is  the  man  who  performs  her  rites  and 
ceremonies,  who  partakes  of  her  sacraments ;  it  is  the  man 
who  is  loyal  to  her  authority.  And  these  she  has  always 
found  a  way  to  admit,  however  black  and  infamous  their 
characters  might  be. 


240  Religion  for  To-day 

These  are  strong  statements,  I  know ;  but  I  believe  that 
history  will  bear  me  out  in  making  them. 

What  then  ?  Is  the  Church  to  pass  away  ?  No,  friends, 
the  evil  of  the  Church  is  right  here.  Do  not  misunderstand 
me.  The  evil  of  the  Church  is  not  in  its  aim,  its  intent,  its 
spirit :  it  is  in  certain  intellectual  assumptions  and  certain 
political  ambitions  on  the  part  of  those  who  control  its  or- 
ganization. The  evil  of  the  Church  in  the  past  lies  in  its 
claim  to  be  infallible,  to  put  limits  to  human  growth.  It 
has  dared  to  imitate  the  fabled  king  who  brought  his  chair 
out  upon  the  seashore,  and  forbade  the  tides  to  advance  be- 
yond the  limits  set  by  his  will. 

So  far  as  the  Church  has  been  able  to  do  it,  it  has  kept 
the  world  from  growing  and  coming  of  age.  There  is  the 
evil  of  it. 

But  the  Church  is  not  going  to  die,  it  is  not  going  to  pass 
away.  A  church  may :  this  particular  church,  that  particular 
church,  may.  Government  does  not  die  out  of  the  world 
because  a  monarchy  falls  or  is  transformed.  Literature  does 
not  perish  because  a  school  of  writers  which  has  dictated 
the  style  of  an  age  changes  or  passes  away.  Health  and 
the  care  of  health  do  not  cease  because  schools  of  medical 
treatment  die  out  and  become  antiquated. 

So  religion  does  not  pass  away  because  a  particular 
church  becomes  antiquated  and  outgrown. 

The  Church,  then,  is  not  to  die  out,  is  not  to  pass  away. 
It  is  to  remain,  I  believe,  the  grandest  institution  on  the 
face  of  the  earth. 

I  want  to  indicate  the  condition  of  the  Church  of  to-day 
and  what  I  believe  it  is  to  be  in  the  to-morrow  that  awaits 
the  future  of  the  world. 

The  Church  to-day  is  passing  through  a  transformation 


The  Church  241 

compelled  by  the  growing  freedom  of  thinking  and  the 
grand  advances  of  human  knowledge.  This  is  the  reason 
why  you  find  cries  of  heresy  north  and  south  and  east  and 
west.  Ministers  and  people  sitting  in  the  pews  —  both  are 
gradually  outgrowing  the  old  statements ;  and  they  are 
either  compelling  their  change  or  showing  such  a  practical 
indifference  to  them  that  they  lie  unused  and  almost  for- 
gotten. This  is  the  condition  of  things  through  which  we 
are  passing. 

I  wish  to  indicate  now  —  my  theme  is  too  large  to  admit 
of  going  deeply  into  the  matter  —  a  few  of  the  things  I 
think  the  Church  is  to  stand  for  to-morrow. 

I  say  the  Church  is  not  to  die  out  and  pass  away.  Why  ? 
Because  man  is  essentially,  necessarily,  eternally,  a  religious 
being.  The  religious  hunger  of  the  world  has  been  on  the 
whole,  I  believe,  its  mightiest  hunger.  Hunger  for  bread, 
that  hunger  which  we  call  love,  and  the  hunger  for  God  are 
the  three  great  hungers  of  the  world.  And  neither  of  them 
by  any  possibility  can  ever  pass  away. 

Man,  then,  is  necessarily  and  eternally  a  religious  being; 
and  religion,  like  art,  like  science,  like  anything  else  that  is 
a  permanent  thought  and  care  of  man,  comes  of  necessity  to 
organize  itself,  and  so  you  have  the  Church.  It  makes  no 
difference  what  you  call  it.  The  Greek  word  ekklesia^  which, 
translated,  becomes  our  "  church,"  means  simply  a  company 
called  together,  a  meeting,  a  voluntary  association. 

The  Church,  then,  is  based  on  the  permanently  religious 
nature  of  man, —  a  foundation  more  enduring  than  the 
eternal  hills,  because  the  earth  and  the  visible  heaven  may 
pass  away,  but  this  will  not. 

Now,  then,  what  shall  this  Church  stand  for  in  future  ?  I 
said  that  the  old  Church  stood  for  human  salvation.     It 


242  Religion  for  To-day 

claimed  to  be  the  power  that  could  assure  man  of  salvation. 
I  believe  that  the  Church  of  to-morrow  is  to  hold  in  its 
hands,  in  a  certain  modern,  free,  purely  rational  sense,  the 
secret  and  conditions  of  human  salvation, —  not  salvation 
from  the  wrath  of  God,  not  salvation  from  any  evil  power  in 
this  world  or  the  next, —  any  evil  personal  power,  I  mean, — 
not  salvation  in  the  sense  of  escape  out  of  one  place  and 
admission  to  another.  But  the  Church  is  to  stand  in  the 
coming  time  for  the  highest  spiritual  nature  of  man, — 
for  truth,  for  love,  for  mercy,  pity,  sympathy,  human  help, — 
for  these  great  spiritual  verities  which  bind  society  together, 
which  make  men  and  women  what  they  are,  and  which  as- 
sure their  happiness  in  this  world  or  any  other  world. 

I  think  that  there  is  a  certain  class  of  men  who,  when 
they  give  up  their  old  ideas,  get  it  into  their  heads  that  it 
does  not  make  any  special  difference  how  they  live  or  what 
they  do,  that  they  are  all  to  be  equally  well  off  in  another 
world.  But,  if  you  stop  and  think  of  it  a  moment,  you  will 
remember  that  salvation  is  not  escaping  one  place  and  gain- 
ing entrance  to  another,  but  is  what  you  become ;  and  that 
you  cannot  be  saved  until  you  have  become  what  you  ought 
to  be,  for  that  is  being  saved ;  that  you  cannot  enter  heaven 
until  you  gain  heaven  in  yourself,  for  that  is  what  heaven 
means. 

When  you  get  this  clearly  in  mind,  you  will  see  that  it 
does  make  all  the  difference  in  the  world  what  kind  of  lives 
you  live,  what  kind  of  thoughts  you  think,  what  kind  of 
words  you  speak,  whether  you  are  selfish  or  unselfish, 
whether  you  devote  yourselves  to  one  pursuit  here  on  earth  or 
to  another. 

If  salvation  meant  simply  voyaging  from  this  world  to 
another  planet,  and  there  entering  into  some  beautiful  land 


The  Church  243 

the  outer  conditions  of  which  were  desirably  fine,  and  if  it 
meant  you  were  to  be  happy  just  because  you  were  there, 
that  would  be  one  thing.  But  you  may  wander  through 
this  universe  from  planet  to  planet,  one  century  after 
another,  but  you  will  never  find  heaven  except  as  the  spirit- 
ual nature  in  you  is  cultivated  and  developed,  until  you  have 
learned  to  enter  into  and  live  in  those  ranges  of  your  being 
which  are  heaven. 

If  you  give  yourselves  throughout  this  life  to  the  things 
that  perish  with  the  using,  and  that  you  cannot  take  with 
you,  where  will  your  heaven  be,  then  ? 

The  Church,  then,  stands  for  salvation  to-day:  it  will 
stand  for  it  to-morrow,  because  it  insists  upon  this  cultiva- 
tion of  the  eternal  elements  in  us,  the  spiritual  nature  of 
man,  those  things  that  link  us  to  God  and  make  us  his 
children,  and  so  of  necessity  heirs  of  eternal  life. 

I  said  that  the  old  Church  claimed  to  hold  in  its  hand  all 
human  welfare  and  prosperity  here.  I  believe  that  there  is 
to  be  no  agent  in  the  future  which  is  to  render  such  a  ser- 
vice in  the  way  of  solving  social  and  industrial  and  mone- 
tary problems  as  is  the  Church.  What  other  agencies  are 
there  engaged  in  solving  these? 

I  do  not  believe  that  it  is  possible  to  reorganize  society 
in  such  a  way  that  everybody  will  be  satisfied  and  at  peace 
so  far  as  their  external  conditions  are  concerned.  Some- 
times I  hear  people  asking,  What  is  to  be  the  solution  of 
our  industrial  and  social  problems  ?  Why,  there  is  to  be  no 
solution.  There  is  never  coming  a  time  when  we  shall  have 
got  everything  nicely  arranged  and  fixed,  and  everybody  is 
satisfied,  and  we  are  done.  We  are  in  a  universe  the  char- 
acteristic of  which  is  growth.  We  cannot  fix  things,  and 
stay  anywhere.     We  must  be  forever  on  the  march. 


244  Religion  for  To-day 

And  you  never  will  get  these  things  arranged  by  a  divi- 
sion of  property,  by  a  reorganization  of  society.  There  are 
not  offices  enough  for  everybody,  there  are  not  enough  high 
social  positions  for  everybody,  there  is  not  money  enough 
for  everybody.  The  solution  does  not  lie  in  that  di- 
rection. 

We  cannot  all  be  the  head,  we  cannot  all  be  the  eye,  we 
cannot  all  be  the  feet,  we  cannot  all  be  this  organ  or  that. 
What  we  need  to  learn  is  that  we  each  solve  the  problem 
of  life  for  ourselves  by  being  first  noble  men  and  women, 
and  then  filling  the  place  where  we  are  finely  and  sweetly 
and  truly  as  we  may. 

Here  is  the  only  solution  of  the  problem  that  will  ever  be 
found ;  and  for  this  the  Church,  the  true  Church,  the  ideal 
Church  of  the  future,  is  to  stand,  and  no  other  organization 
on  the  face  of  the  earth  does  stand  for  it. 

The  Church  is  to  stand  for  character,  to  stand  for  right- 
eousness ;  and  it  is  to  insist  forever  that  the  rich  and  the 
high  shall  be  first  just,  then  tender,  kindly,  loving,  helpful. 
And  it  is  to  insist  that  the  poor  and  the  lowly  shall  forever 
be  first  men  and  women,  basing  themselves  on  character, 
and  filling  the  place  where  they  are,  not  cringing  to  the 
great,  not  envying  the  great,  not  cursing,  not  hating  the 
great. 

I  have  never  seen  anybody  high  in  office  yet,  or  very  rich 
yet,  whose  happiness  and  contentment  I  felt  so  sure  of  that 
I  knew  it  was  perfectly  safe  to  envy  him. 

Let  me  take  the  next  step  right  here,  then,  and  say  —  it  is 
a  continuation  of  this  idea  —  that  the  Church  of  the  future  is 
to  stand  for  the  only  tenable  idea  of  human  equality.  Learn- 
ing is  not  for  everybody,  knowledge  of  music  is  not  for  every- 
body, aptness  in  art  is  not  for  everybody,  scientific  investi- 


The  Church  245 

gation  is  not  for  everybody,  high  social  positions  or  political 
offices  are  not  for  everybody.  There  is  no  such  thing  as 
equality  of  ability,  of  character,  of  condition,  of  possession, 
on  the  face  of  the  earth ;  and  there  never  will  be. 

The  Declaration  of  Independence  speaks  of  men  being 
born  free  and  equal.  They  are  not  born  free,  and  they  are 
not  born  equal.  Freedom,  if  any  one  ever  attains  it,  is  the 
result  of  struggle,  of  growth,  not  something  conferred  by 
birth;  and  equality,  except  of  rights,  is  never  attained. 
There  is  no  such  thing  on  the  face  of  the  earth;  and  I 
question  as  to  whether  any  such  thing  is  desirable. 

Suppose  all  the  people  in  the  world  were  equally  rich, 
suppose  they  were  all  equally  great,  that  they  all  —  if  you 
can  imagine  such  an  absurdity  —  held  equally  high  official 
positions,  that  they  all  occupied  similar  social  stations, 
that  there  were  no  differences,  no  divergencies,  in  human 
society.  In  the  first  place,  for  the  sake  of  having  a  little 
change,  I  would  be  the  first  one  to  volunteer  to  take  a  lower 
position.     It  would  be  insufferably  monotonous. 

And,  then,  if  all  the  people  are  writing  books,  who  are 
to  read  them  ?  If  all  the  people  are  painting  pictures,  who 
are  to  admire  them  ?  If  all  are  building  houses,  who  are  to 
live  in  them  ?     If  all  are  to  rule,  who  is  to  be  governed  t 

You  see  the  idea,  the  moment  you  attempt  to  analyze  it, 
is  absurd.  There  is  no  such  thing  as  this  kind  of  equality : 
it  is  impossible,  it  is  undesirable.  The  only  thing  we  have 
a  right  to  demand  is  that  we  shall  have  an  equal  oppor- 
tunity to  become  the  highest  and  best  that  we  may.  This, 
I  believe,  God  will  assure  to  us  some  when  and  some  where, 
if  not  here  and  now. 

But  the  Church  stands,  I  said,  for  the  only  obtainable 
idea  of   equality.     It  stands  for   the  thought  that  we   are 


246  Religion  for  To-day 

God's  children.  You  have  come  in  here  this  morning,  all 
divergencies  of  character,  all  sorts  of  differences  in  social 
standing  and  position,  all  sorts  of  diversities  as  to  means, 
as  to  outward  possessions, —  different  in  every  sort  of  way. 

But  the  moment  you  cross  that  threshold  you  are  in  a 
house  consecrated  to  the  thought  of  the  one  God  and  Father 
of  us  all;  and  here  we  are  brothers,  here  we  are  sisters, 
here  we  are  common  children  of  the  one  blessed  Father  in 
heaven,  and  all  these  earthly  distinctions  fade  away.  And,  if 
we  can  let  our  imagination  take  flight  for  a  moment,  we  shall 
find  that  just  a  few  years  will  pass  and  these  things  that 
we  pride  ourselves  on,  that  are  creating  these  distinctions  of 
high  and  low  and  rich  and  poor  here  will  all  be  gone,  and  he 
that  is  first  up  there  may  be  one  of  those  who  is  the  lowliest 
here,  and  he  who  is  first  here  may  find  himself  at  the  foot 
of  the  class  over  there ;  for  the  Church  teaches  that  be- 
neath all  these  superficial  distinctions  is  the  question  of 
likeness  to  God,  the  question  of  love. 

Paul  teaches  —  and  it  is  one  of  the  finest  teachings  in  that 
great  book  —  that,  when  you  have  sought  all  sorts  of  distinc- 
tions and  powers  and  possessions  of  every  kind,  you  come 
at  last  to  face  the  fact  that  the  best  gift  is  one  that  cannot 
be  the  exclusive  possession  of  anybody,  that  which  is  open 
to  us  all, —  love.  Love  is  God,  and  God  is  love,  and  he 
that  loveth  is  born  of  God  and  knoweth  God ;  and  he  that 
loveth  stands  high  over  there.  Not  he  who  is  rich,  not  he 
who  is  intellectual,  not  he  who  is  mighty  over  his  fellows, 
but  he  who  is  likest  God. 

Again,  the  Church  stands,  the  ideal  Church  —  it  has 
been  already  hinted  in  what  I  have  said  —  for  that  which 
is  highest  and  most  distinguished  in  manhood  and  woman- 
hood. 


The  Chtirch  247 

There  are  those  who  have  an  idea  that  to  be  interested  in 
church  affairs  is  not  quite  manly.  But  stop  and  think  a 
moment, —  I  can  only  suggest  the  idea, —  the  Church  bases 
itself  on  that  which  is  peculiarly,  characteristically,  almost 
exclusively  manly. 

We  are  all  animals  :  we  share  that  with  the  denizens  of 
the  woods  and  the  fields.  But  come  up  higher.  The  lower 
animals  think :  we  distance  them  in  thought.  They  share 
with  us  that.  What  is  there  that  we  have  that  makes  us 
exclusively  men  ?  What  is  it  that  takes  us  up  out  of  the 
animal  world  and  sets  us  at  the  head,  and  declares  that  we 
are  not  only  sharers  in  the  earthly  nature,  but  in  the 
divine }  Before  you  find  that  which  sets  us  apart  from  the 
lower  life  around  us  and  crowns  us  as  human,  you  must 
come  up  into  the  realm  that  religion  concerns  itself  with, — 
the  spirit,  love,  the  thought  of  God,  and  the  possibility  of 
our  relation  with  God. 

This  is  that,  and  this   is  that  alone,  which  makes  us  men. 

Religion,  then, —  the  Church, —  appeals  to  you  as  men, 
and  bases  itself  on  that  which  is  peculiarly  human. 

One  other  thing  the  Church  stands  for, —  worship.  And 
here,  again,  I  have  met  men  who  thought  that  worship  was 
undignified,  that  it  was  somehow  beneath  them.  They 
looked  upon  it  as  cringing,  crawling.  They  perhaps  had  in 
their  mind  a  picture  of  a  man  who  bends  himself  in  the 
dust  before  a  king. 

But  note,  friends,  that  worship,  the  possibility  of  worship, 
is  the  most  divine  thing  in  us  all.  What  does  it  mean  1  It 
means  that  we  are  capable  of  cherishing  an  ideal ;  and  the 
fact  that  we  are  capable  of  cherishing  an  ideal  means  that 
we  are  capable  of  growth.  There  could  be  no  advance,  no 
possibility  of  progress,  on  the  part  of  creatures  that  do  not 


248  Religio7i  for  To-day 

dream.  An  animal  will  build  his  lair  the  same  way  year  after 
year :  he  will  make  it  a  little  better  this  year  if  he  discovers 
a  better  place  or  better  material  or  you  show  him  a  better 
place  and  better  material ;  but  no  animal  ever  dreams  out 
a  new  style  of  architecture  for  his  home,  no  animal  is  ever 
worried  over  his  social  position  and  wonders  as  to  how  he 
can  better  himself.  No  bird  ever  dreams  out  a  higher  moral 
ideal,  condemns  itself  for  its  sin,  or  wonders  how  it  can  be- 
come a  nobler  kind  of  creature.  Man  is  the  only  one  who 
is  restlessly  haunted  by  dreams  of  something  better  than 
he  ever  saw  or  knew. 

And  right  in  here  let  me  hint  at  one  fact, —  that  sin,  which 
people  tell  us  is  a  sign  of  our  degradation,  is  that  which 
characterizes  us  as  possible  children  of  God.  If  we  had 
no  sense  of  sin,  we  should  have  no  sense  of  imperfection; 
and  that  would  mean  that  we  had  never  dreamed  of  being 
anything  better. 

The  consciousness  of  sin  is  not  a  sign  of  degradation, 
then :  it  is  a  sign  of  uplift,  of  assent,  of  possible  aspiration 
towards  the  highest. 

Man,  then,  is  forever  haunted  by  the  idea  that  he  ought 
to  be  a  better  man  and  can  be ;  by  the  idea  that  he  ought 
to  be  surrounded  by  a  better  and  higher  type  of  civilization, 
that  he  ought  to  build  himself  a  better  house,  that  he  ought 
to  create  better  industrial  and  social  positions.  And  he 
always  will  be  haunted  by  this  ideal  forever;  and  that 
means  that  he  will  always  advance,  that  he  has  in  him  the 
possibility  of  endless  evolution  and  growth.  And  this 
means  —  the  point  that  I  spoke  of  at  the  outset  —  that 
man  is  a  worshipper :  he  does  not  worship  that  which  he 
has  attained.  Man  always  worships  something  that  eludes 
him,  that  haunts  him,  that  he    has    not  yet  attained;  and 


The  Church  249 

so  he  reaches  on,  reaching  for  it  until  as  soon  as  he  has 
grasped  it  in  his  hands  another  dream  dawns  upon  his 
soul,  and  so  he  goes  on  and  on  forever. 

The  Church,  then,  is  to  be  in  the  future,  as  it  has 
been  in  the  past,  the  mightiest,  the  most  interesting,  the 
most  magnificent  organization  on  the  face  of  the  earth. 
All  we  need  is  that  there  should  be  freedom  of  thought, 
and  that  the  open  road  should  never  be  blockaded  or  barred, 
but  should  stretch  on,  inviting  our  feet  to  advance  towards 
something  higher  and  finer,  year  after  year,  and  age  after 
age. 

What  shall  be  the  sacraments,  what  shall  be  the  rituals, 
what  shall  be  the  method  of  government,  of  the  Church  of 
to-morrow  ? 

I  know  not,  I  care  not.  We  are  free  to  express  our  be- 
liefs in  any  terms  we  choose,  only  we  must  not  bind  our- 
selves by  any.  We  are  free  to  arrange  our  music  as  we 
will,  to  organize  our  rituals  and  services,  and  make  them 
grand  and  imposing  as  we  will.  We  are  free  to  organize  our 
ecclesiastical  governments  according  to  any  idea  which 
suits  us.  These  do  not  touch  the  essential  things  for  which 
the  Church  stands. 

I  would  like  only  to  suggest  one  thing  here  that  seems 
to  me  too  often  forgotten.  Whenever  the  Church  has  set  up 
officials  over  it  in  the  past  who  have  attained  high  position, 
ambition  has  been  appealed  to ;  and  it  has  always  put  itself 
in  the  hands  of  tyrants.  I  wonder  that  in  this  country,  where 
we  pride  ourselves  upon  our  republicanism  and  democracy, 
it  does  not  appeal  to  us  more  to  have  a  church  in  accord- 
ance with  our  governmental  idea, — 

"  A  church  without  a  bishop 
And  a  State  without  a  king." 


250  Religion  for  To-day 

This  is  the  old  idea  that  was  sung  years  ago  in  the  beginning 
of  our  republic. 

It  seems  to  me  that  we  ought  to  attain  a  free  and  flexible 
organization,  that  shall  not  be  tied  by  any  power  above 
it  that  shall  interfere  with  its  free  growth  towards  all  that 
is  highest  and  best.  Within  these  limits  we  can  make  the 
external  order  of  the  Church  what  we  will. 

And  then,  living  with  God  and  for  God,  organizing  our- 
selves around  these  spiritual  ideas,  trying  to  help  each  other 
to  live  the  spiritual  life,  we  shall  gain  glimpses  of  that  eter 
nal  destiny  for  which  the  Church  has  always  stood  and 
spoken, —  the  idea  that  death  is  only  a  name,  and  that  the 
career  on  which  we  have  started  is  endless  in  its  reach,  and 
glowing  with  increasing  glory  day  by  day. 


S\  H  R  /,  n  y 

OF  THF 


TTNIVEHSITY 


:nT 


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